Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

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

A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.

. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .

I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. If you're a writer you have some inclination to pay attention. I didn't just tune it out and think about baseball. So, it had an effect on me.

This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.