The object of war is to survive it.

In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.

When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

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

She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.

And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.