With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.

I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

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

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

Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat.