For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel.

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

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.