I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.

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.

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases

Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.

So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.

The object of war is to survive it.

It seems to me that people who don’t learn as easily as others suffer from a kind of learning disability—there is something different about the way they comprehend unfamiliar material—but I fail to see how this disability is improved by psychiatric consultation. What seems to be lacking is a technical ability that those of us called ‘good students’ are born with. Someone should concretely study these skills and teach them. What does a shrink have to do with the process?