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

Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.

The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.

You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life