Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.

The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.

The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.

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

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.

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.

He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women- it was just another way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say.