My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one. But we are a country - USA - that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.

There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.

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.

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.