but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.

Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel.

He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.

The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.

Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.

No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.