It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?

I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.

What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

If I had to be anything," he told her, "I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.