I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.

All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop.

This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.

There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned.

The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one.

Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them.