The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.

If you feel so strongly about what's on television, don't have one.

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

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.