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.

Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to.

A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

You think you have a memory; but it has you!

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.