Because who can describe that look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?

All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop.

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.

Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.

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

Before I began The Cider House Rules, I thought I wanted to write about a father-son relationship that was closer, more conflicted, and ultimately more loving, than most. Then I began to think of a relationship between an old orphanage director and an unadoptable orphan - a kid who goes out into the world and fails and keeps coming back, so that the old guy ends up with someone he's got to keep.

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.