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.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.