The object of war is to survive it.

…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives