All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop.

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one. But we are a country - USA - that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.

...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.

In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?

You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases