In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.