I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.

If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.

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

I'm not at all contemporary, not even modern, and the fact that I would be so quaintly attracted to that wrestling rule makes me, I suppose, seem all the more old-fashioned. I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.