Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.

You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.

Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

Being wrong about important things is exhausting.

What a phrase that is: 'that explains everything!' I know better than to think anything 'explains everything' today.