No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.

…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

She was an expert at the art of sudden appearance.

It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced - when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination.

Being wrong about important things is exhausting.

I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.