Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.

but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.

The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.

Dan suggested to Owen and me that we were better off to not involve ourselves with Hester. How true! But how we wanted to be involved in the thrilling real-life sleaziness that we suspected Hester was in the thick-of. We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.

The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.