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.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.

There's nothing as scary as the future.

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.

People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.