I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.

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.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.

Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.