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Grant Us Safe Lodging, And Holy Rest,” Mrs. Grogan Was Saying, “and Peace At Last.” Amen, Thought Wilbur Larch, The Saint Of St. Cloud’s, Who Was Seventy-something, And An Ether Addict, And Who Felt That He’d Come A Long Way And Still Had A Long Way To Go.

-John Irving

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Grant Us Safe Lodging,

John Irving

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Grant Us Safe Lodging, And Holy Rest,” Mrs. Grogan Was Saying, “and Peace At Last.” Amen, Thought Wilbur Larch, The Saint Of St. Cloud’s, Who Was Seventy-something, And An Ether Addict, And Who Felt That He’d Come A Long Way And Still Had A Long Way To Go.

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In An Episodic Treatment, Such As A Teleplay Is, You Have The Ability To Do What You Can Do In A Novel, Which Is Flash Back And Flash Forward In The Same Instant, In The Same Scene, In The Same Voice.

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.

I Suppose I'm Proudest Of My Novels For What's Imagined In Them. I Think The World Of My Imagination Is A Richer And More Interesting Place Than My Personal Biography.

The Powerful Wind Swept His Hair Away From His Face; He Leaned His Chest Into The Wind, As If He Stood On The Deck Of A Ship Heading Into The Wind, Slicing Through The Waves Of An Ocean He’d Not Yet Seen.

It Is An Important Distinction To Note That She Looked Not Only As If She Had Taken Good Care Of Herself, But That She Had Good Reason To Have Done So. (...) She Looked To Be In Such Total Possession Of Her Life That Only The Most Confident Men Could Continue To Look At Her If She Looked Back At Them. Even In Bus Stations, She Was A Woman Who Was Stared At Only Until She Looked Back.

The More Clearly One Sees This World; The More One Is Obliged To Pretend It Does Not Exist.

Watch Out For People Who Call Themselves Religious; Make Sure You Know What They Mean - Make Sure They Know What They Mean!

Nothing Bears Out In Practice What It Promises Incipiently.

… And So He Tried To Accept The Ache In His Heart As What Dr. Larch Would Call The Common Symptoms Of Normal Life.

When People Say That German Or Any Other Language Is Romantic... All They Really Mean Is That They've Enjoyed A Past In The Language

I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.

When Jack Burns Needed To Hold His Mother's Hand, His Fingers Could See In The Dark.

It Seems To Me That People Who Don’t Learn As Easily As Others Suffer From A Kind Of Learning Disability—there Is Something Different About The Way They Comprehend Unfamiliar Material—but I Fail To See How This Disability Is Improved By Psychiatric Consultation. What Seems To Be Lacking Is A Technical Ability That Those Of Us Called ‘good Students’ Are Born With. Someone Should Concretely Study These Skills And Teach Them. What Does A Shrink Have To Do With The Process?

There Is No Straightforward Negotiation With A Four Year Old.

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.

What A Phrase That Is: 'that Explains Everything!' I Know Better Than To Think Anything 'explains Everything' Today.

You Take Every Opportunity Given You In This World, Even If You Have Too Many Opportunities. One Day, The Opportunities Stop, You Know.

I Will Tell You What Is My Overriding Perception Of The Last Twenty Years: That We Are A Civilization Careening Toward A Succession Of Anticlimaxes – Toward An Infinity Of Unsatisfying, And Disagreeable Endings.

When I Was Still In Prep School - 14, 15 - I Started Keeping Notebooks, Journals. I Started Writing, Almost Like Landscape Drawing Or Life Drawing. I Never Kept A Diary, I Never Wrote About My Day And What Happened To Me, But I Described Things.

Writing A Novel Is Actually Searching For Victims. As I Write I Keep Looking For Casualties. The Stories Uncover The Casualties.

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.

I Grew Up In A Family Where, Through My Teenage Years, I Was Expected To Go To Church On Sunday. It Wasn't Terribly Painful.

I'm Not Proselytizing My Method. I Don't Believe That One Writer Should Tell Other Writers How To Write.

There Are Few Things As Seemingly Untouched By The Real World As A Child Asleep.

You Can't Learn Everything You Need To Know Legally.

If You Feel Strongly About People Having Abortions, Don't Have One. But We Are A Country - Usa - That Likes To Be Punitive. We Want To Restrict. It Is A Kind Of Religious Fervor Run Amuck.

You Don't Have To Be In The Habit Of Going To Church To Listen To Such A Literary Minister; You Don't Have To Be A Believer To Be Moved By Mr. Buechner's Faith.

My Dear Boy, Please Don’t Put A Label On Me—don’t Make Me A Category Before You Get To Know Me!

Every American Should Be Forced To Live Outside The United States For A Year Or Two. Americans Should Be Forced To See How Ridiculous They Appear To The Rest Of The World! They Should Listen To Someone Else's Version Of Themselves--to Anyone Else's Version! Every Country Knows More About America Than Americans Know About Themselves! And Americans Know Absolutely Nothing About Any Other Country!

I Have Stood Aside To See The Phantoms Of Those Days Go By Me. They Are Gone, And I Resume The Journey Of My Story.’ (david Copperfield) “but All That Night He Lay Awake Because The Phantoms Of Those Days Were Not Gone. Like The Tiny, Terrible Holes In The Prophylactics, The Phantoms Of Those Days Were Not Easy To Detect—and Their Meaning Was Unknown—but They Were There.

Adolescence-is It The First Time In Life We Discover That We Have Something Terrible To Hide From Those Who Love Us?

In The World According To Her Father, Jenny Garp Knew, We Must Have Energy. Her Famous Grandmother, Jenny Fields, Once Thought Of Us As Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, And Goners. But In The World According To Garp, We Are All Terminal Cases.

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

You Know, Everybody Dies. My Parents Died. Your Father Died. Everybody Dies. I'm Going To Die Too. So Will You. The Thing Is, To Have A Life Before We Die. It Can Be A Real Adventure Having A Life

As It Was, Things Went From Bad To Worse, As They Often Will When Amateurs Are Involved In An Activity That They Perform In Bad Temper – Or In A Hurry.

My Life As A Writer Consists Of 1/8 Talent And 7/8 Discipline.

Don't Forget This, Too: Rumors Aren't Interested In The Unsensational Story; Rumors Don't Care What's True.

What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too.

Freedom Of Choice

Goodnight You Princes Of Maine, You Kings Of New England.

This Is A Writer’s Lesson: To Learn That The Sounds That We Imagine Can Be The Clearest, Loudest Sounds Of All.

Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.

I Still Believe In Getting Married In Churches And Baptizing Children. I Go Through Those Motions.

It´s Natural To Want Someone You Love To Do What You Want, Or What You Think Would Be Good For Them, But You Have To Let Everything Happen To Them. You Can't Interfere With People You Love Any More Than You're Supposed To Interfere With People You Don't Even Know. And That's Hard, ..., Because You Often Feel Like Interfering -you Want To Be The One Who Makes The Plans.

Your Memory Is A Monster; You Forget - It Doesn't. It Simply Files Things Away. It Keeps Things For You, Or Hides Things From You - And Summons Them To Your Recall With A Will Of Its Own. You Think You Have A Memory; But It Has You!

She Sat Keenly White And Still Among Them, A Witness To Everything--maybe Determining Nothing, Possibly Judging It All.

If You Presume To Love Something, You Must Love The Process Of It Much More Than You Love The Finished Product.

Along The (writing) Way Accidents Happen, Detours Get Taken... But These Are Not "divine" Accidents; I Don't Believe In Those. I Believe You Have Constructive Accidents En Route Through A Novel Only Because You Have Mapped A Clear Way. If You Have Confidence That You Have A Clear Direction To Take, You Always Have Confidence To Explore Other Ways; If They Prove To Be Mere Digressions, You'll Recognize That And Make The Necessary Revisions. The More You Know About A Book, The Freer You Can Be To Fool Around. The Less You Know, The Tighter You Get.

It Doesn't Really Matter Who Said It - It's So Obviously True. Before You Can Write Anything, You Have To Notice Something.

I Thought Some Of The Stories Were Neat; I Liked Some Of The Liturgy And Some Of The Songs. If You're A Writer You Have Some Inclination To Pay Attention. I Didn't Just Tune It Out And Think About Baseball. So, It Had An Effect On Me.

You've Got To Get Obsessed And Stay Obsessed.

I Feel More A Part Of The Wrestling Community Than I Feel I Belong To The Community Of Arts And Letters. Why? Because Wrestling Requires Even More Dedication Than Writing Because Wrestling Represents The Most Difficult And Rewarding Objective That I Have Ever Dedicated Myself To; Because Wrestling And Wrestling Coaches Are Among The Most Disciplined And Self-sacrificing People I Have Ever Known.

If You Can't Love Crudeness, How Can You Truly Love Mankind?

You Bet I Write Disaster Fiction. We Have Compiled A Disastrous Record On This Planet, A Record Of Stupidity And Absurdity And Self-abuse And Self-aggrandizement And Self-deception And Pompousness And Self-righteousness And Cruelty And Indifference Beyond What Any Other Species Has Demonstrated The Capacity For, Which Is The Capacity For All The Above.

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.

There Are Always Suicides Among People Who Are Unable To Say What They Mean.

You Live Your Life At The Time You Live It -- You Don't Have Much Of An Overview When What's Happening To You Is Still Happening.

Owen Meany Believed That “coincidence” Was A Stupid, Shallow Refuge Sought By Stupid, Shallow People Who Were Unable To Accept The Fact That Their Lives Were Shaped By A Terrifying And Awesome Design – More Powerful And Unstoppable Than The Yankee Flyer. (a Train)

Sell My Old Clothes - I'm Off To Heaven

I Was Brought Up In A Community, In A Family That Valued Such Things As Good Manners, And I Still Do.

Lilly Was Not Crazy. She Left A Serious Suicide Note. 'sorry,' Said The Note. 'just Not Big Enough.

The Concept Of Writing A Novel And Not Knowing Where It's Going - I Don't Know How To Do That. Novels Are Plot- And Character-driven, So If I Don't Know What Becomes Of People, How Can I Know Where It Should Begin?

Our Memory Is A Monster; You Forget It - It Does Not.

The Object Of War Is To Survive It.

The Arrangements That Couples Make In Order To Maintain Civility In The Midst Of Their Journey To Divorce Are Often Most Elaborate When The Professed Top Priority Is To Protect A Child.

Here Is The Trap You Are In.... And It's Not My Trap—i Haven't Trapped You. Because Abortions Are Illegal, Women Who Need And Want Them Have No Choice In The Matter, And You—because You Know How To Perform Them—have No Choice, Either. What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too. If Abortion Was Legal, A Woman Would Have A Choice—and So Would You. You Could Feel Free Not To Do It Because Someone Else Would. But The Way It Is, You're Trapped. Women Are Trapped. Women Are Victims, And So Are You.

And I Find - I'm 63, And My Capacity To Be By Myself And Just Spend Time By Myself Hasn't Diminished Any. That's The Necessary Part Of Being A Writer, You Better Like Being Alone.

Like Being Alone

When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion.

Freedom Of Religion

In This World,” Franny Once Observed, “just As You’re Trying To Think Of Yourself As Memorable, There Is Always Someone Who Forgets That That They Have Met You.

I've Always Been Slow But I'm Even Slower Now. I'm More Into The Waiting, Or I Guess I'm More Patient About The Waiting.

I Write Very Quickly; I Rewrite Very Slowly. It Takes Me Nearly As Long To Rewrite A Book As It Does To Get The First Draft.

There's A Lot Of Ignorance About How Long It Takes To Write A Novel. There's A Lot Of Ignorance About How Long A Novel Is In Your Head Before You Start To Write It.

Nearly Everything Seems A Letdown After A Writer Has Finished Writing Something.

Is It A Democratic Society That Condemns People To The Accident Of Conception? What Are We-monkeys? If You Expect People To Be Responsible For Their Children, You Have To Give Them The Right To Choose Whether Or Not To Have Children. What Are You People Thinking Of? You're Not Only Crazy! You're Ogres!

Thinking Of You

She Was An Expert At The Art Of Sudden Appearance.

To Each Other, We Were As Normal And Nice As The Smell Of Bread. We Were Just A Family. In A Family Even Exaggerations Make Perfect Sense.

Being Afraid You'll Look Like A Coward Is The Worst Reason For Doing Anything.

I'm A Worst-case Scenario Person. I'm Only Interested In A Story Because I Kind Of Go, Like A Magnet, To The Worst Thing That Can Happen.

Worst Case Scenario

Grant Us Safe Lodging, And Holy Rest,” Mrs. Grogan Was Saying, “and Peace At Last.” Amen, Thought Wilbur Larch, The Saint Of St. Cloud’s, Who Was Seventy-something, And An Ether Addict, And Who Felt That He’d Come A Long Way And Still Had A Long Way To Go.

So We Dream On. Thus We Invent Our Lives. We Give Ourselves A Sainted Mother, We Make Our Father A Hero; And Someone’s Older Brother And Someone’s Older Sister – They Become Our Heroes Too. We Invent What We Love And What We Fear. There Is Always A Brave Lost Brother – And A Little Lost Sister, Too. We Dream On And On: The Best Hotel, The Perfect Family, The Resort Life. And Our Dreams Escape Us Almost As Vividly As We Can Imagine Them.

You Think You Have A Memory; But It Has You!

There's No Monkey Business About This Election,' He Told The Voters. 'if You're Enough Of An Asshole To Vote For Nixon, Your Dumb Vote Will Be Counted––just Like Anybody Else!

I Don't Begin A Novel Until I Have Written, Not Just The Last Sentence, But Usually, As A Result Thereof, Many Of The Surrounding Final Paragraphs, So That In Addition To Knowing What Happens, I Know What The Voice Is.

O God — Please Give Him Back! I Shall Keep Asking You.

I Believe A Novel Should Be As Complicated And Involved As You're Capable Of Making It.

I Have Always Believed That, In A Story, If Something Traumatic Or Calamitous Enough Happens To A Kid At A Formative Age, That Will Make Him Or Her The Adult They Become.

A Sentence Boiled In Her, But She Could Not Yet See It Clearly.

I Certainly Think Obama Is The Most Hopeful President I've Seen In The Country Since John Kennedy.

How We Love To Love Things For Other People; How We Love To Have Other People Love Things Through Our Eyes.

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.

My Life Is A Reading List.

Grown-ups Shouldn’t Finish Books They’re Not Enjoying. When You’re No Longer A Child, And You No Longer Live At Home, You Don’t Have To Finish Everything On Your Plate. One Reward Of Leaving School Is That You Don’t Have To Finish Books You Don’t Like.

Everybody Dies … The Thing Is, To Have A Life Before We Die.

Garp Drank The Beer And Wondered If Everything Was An Anticlimax.

My Brain Is Sending Poison To My Heart.

In A School Community, Someone Who Reads A Book For Some Secretive Purpose, Other Than Discussing It, Is Strange. What Was She Reading For?

It Happens To Many Teenagers-that Moment When You Feel Full Of Resentment Or Distrust For Those Adults You Once Loved Unquestioningly.

You Don't Want To Be Ungenerous Toward People Who Give You Prizes, But It Is Never The Social Or Political Message That Interests Me In A Novel. I Begin With An Interest In A Relationship, A Situation, A Character.

It's A No-win Argument - That Business Of What We're Born With And What Our Environment Does To Us. And It's A Boring Argument, Because It Simplifies The Mysteries That Attend Both Our Birth And Our Growth.

. . .there Are Moments When Time Does Stop. We Must Be Alert Enough To Notice Such Moments . . .

If You Don't Feel That You Are Possibly On The Edge Of Humiliating Yourself, Of Losing Control Of The Whole Thing, Then Probably What You Are Doing Isn't Very Vital.

No Adult In My Family Would Ever Tell Me Anything About Who My Father Was. I Knew From An Older Cousin - Only Four Years Older Than I Am - Everything, Or What Little I Could Discover About Him.

I Always Thought That You Could Do Worse Than Find Yourself Dying In The Company Of A Devoted Former Student.

Finding Yourself

Because Abortions Are Illegal, Women Who Need And Want Them Have No Choice In The Matter, And You-because You Know How To Perform Them-have No Choice, Either

No One But Me Ever Put A Hand On Me To Feel That Baby. No One Wanted To Put His Ear Against It And Listen...you Shouldn't Have A Baby If There's No One Who Wants To Feel It Kick Or Listen To It Move.

Thus We Try To Keep Our Heroes Alive; Hence We Remember Them.

The Only Way You Get Americans To Notice Anything Is To Tax Them Or Draft Them Or Kill Them.

Whatever I Write, No Matter How Gray Or Dark The Subject Matter, It's Still Going To Be A Comic Novel.

I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position, Though I Have Every Respect For An Individual Who Says, "i Could Never Have That Procedure, I Could Never See A Film Or Read A Book About That Procedure." It Doesn't Bother Me If People Feel That Way.

Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.

Death, It Seems," Garp Wrote, "does Not Like To Wait Until We Are Prepared For It. Death Is Indulgent And Enjoys, When It Can, A Flair For The Dramatic.

He Was Too Young To Know That, In Any Novel With A Reasonable Amount Of Forethought, There Were No Coincidences.

But Writers, Garp Knew, Were Just Observers - Good And Ruthless Imitators Of Human Behavior.

The Book Works Better If I Know Everything I Can About The Ending. Not Just What Happens, But How It Happens And What The Language Is; Not Just The Last Sentence, But Enough Of The Sentences Surrounding That Last Sentence To Know What The Tone Of Voice Is. I Imagined It As Something Almost Musical. Then You Are Writing Toward Something; You Know The Sound Of Your Voice At The End Of The Story. That's How You Want To Sound In Those Final Sentences: The Degree That It Is Uplifting Or Not, The Degree That It Is Melancholic Or Not.

I Had Been A Student In Vienna, And One Of The Neat Little Things I Had Found Out Was About That Zoo. It Was A Good Debut Novel For Me To Have Published. I Was 26 Or 27 When It Was Published. I Already Had A Kid And Would Soon Have A Second.

We Don't Always Have A Choice How We Get To Know One Another. Sometimes, People Fall Into Our Lives Cleanly--as If Out Of The Sky, Or As If There Were A Direct Flight From Heaven To Earth--the Same Sudden Way We Lose People, Who Once Seemed They Would Always Be Part Of Our Lives

If I Have Any Advantage, Maybe, As A Writer, It Is That I Don't Think I'm Very Interesting. I Mean, Beginning A Novel With The Last Sentence Is A Pretty Plodding Way To Spend Your Life.

I Try To See The Whole Woman,' Eddie Said To Hannah. 'of Course I Recognize That She's Old, But There Are Photographs - Or The Equivalent Of Photographs In One's Imagination Of Anyone's Life. A Whole Life, I Mean. I Can Picture Her When She Was Much Younger Than I Am - Because There Are Always Gestures And Expressions That Are Ingrained, Ageless. An Old Woman Doesn't See Herself As An Old Woman, And Neither Do I. I Try To See Her Her Whole Life In Her. There's Something So Moving About Someone's Whole Life.

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

Important Things

Ambition Robs You Of Your Childhood. The Moment You Want To Become An Adult—in Any Way—something In Your Childhood Dies.

If We Live Long Enough, We Become Caricatures Of Ourselves.

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.

I Think Now That Is The Nature Of Hymns-they Make Us Want To Repeat Them...they Are A Part Of Any Service, And Often The Only Part Of A Funeral Service, That Makes Us Feel Everything Is Acceptable.

I Do Know Where I'm Going And It's Just A Matter Of Finding The Language To Get There.

In Increments Both Measurable And Not, Our Childhood Is Stolen From Us -- Not Always In One Momentous Event But Often In A Series Of Small Robberies, Which Add Up To The Same Loss.

Life," Garp Wrote, "is Sadly Not Structured Like A Good Old-fashioned Novel. Instead An End Occurs When Those Who Are Meant To Peter Out Have Petered Out. All That Is Left Is Memory. But Even A Nihilist Has Memory.

The Way You Define Yourself As A Writer Is That You Write Every Time You Have A Free Minute. If You Didn't Behave That Way You Would Never Do Anything.

Almost Everyone Is Dying To Leave Home, Eventually; And Almost Everyone Needs To.

I'm Not A Movie Person. They're Collaborations Of The Worst Kind. You Must Compromise Yourself To Many Interests That Are Venal And Crass And Do Not Have Your Best Interests At Heart.

I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position. But When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion. The Catholic Church May Espouse Its Opinion On Abortion To The Members Of Its Congregation. But They Are In Violation Of Separation Of Church And State When They Try To Proselytize Their Abortion Politics On People Who Are Not Catholics.

I Think That Was When The Headmaster Realized He Had Lost; He Realized Then That He Was Finished. Because, What Could He Do? Was He Going To Tell Us To Stop Praying? We Kept Our Heads Bowed; And We Kept Praying. Even As Awkward As He Was, The Rev. Mr. Merrill Had Made It Clear To Us That There Was No End To Praying For Owen Meany.

I Believe In Plot, In Development Of Character, In The Effect Of The Passage Of Time, In A Good Story - Better Than Something You Might Find In The Newspaper. And I Believe A Novel Should Be As Complicated And Involved As You're Capable Of Making It.

Being Reviewed Is Being Condescended To By Your Inferiors.

In The World According To Garp, We Are All Terminal Cases

But I Often Think That So-called Glamorous People Are Just Very Busy People.

I Have Pretty Thick Skin, And I Think If You're Going To Be In This Business, If You're Going To Be An Actor Or A Writer, You Better Have A Thick Skin.

So, I Don't Work In Terms Of Real Time. I Don't Work In A Timely Fashion.

I Don’t Have To Say To You Or Anyone In Our Wrestling Community That We Are A Small World Unto Ourselves And There Is Often A Big Difference In How Much We Love And Understand Each Other And How Little We’re Understood Or Appreciated By People Who Spend Their Weekends Watching Basketball.

No One Could Have Fathomed What A Life He'd Led, For It Was Chiefly A Life Lived In His Mind.

I'm Not At All Contemporary, Not Even Modern, And The Fact That I Would Be So Quaintly Attracted To That Wrestling Rule Makes Me, I Suppose, Seem All The More Old-fashioned. I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.

...every Study Of The Gods, Of Everyone's Gods, Is A Revelation Of Vengeance Towards The Innocent.

You Cannot Drive With Your Eyes In The Rear-view Mirror… But Dignity Is Difficult To Maintain. Stamina Requires Constant Upkeep. Repetition Is Boring. And You Pay For Grace.

In Our Hearts... There Must Abide Some Pity For Those People Who Have Always Felt Themselves To Be Separate From Even Their Most Familiar Surroundings, Those People Who Either Are Foreigners Or Who Suffer A Singular Point Of View That Makes Them Feel As If They’re Foreigners - Even In Their Native Lands. In Our Hearts... There Also Abides A Certain Suspicion That Such People Need To Feel Set Apart From Their Society. But People Who Initiate Loneliness Are No Less Lonely Than Those Who Are Suddenly Surprised By Loneliness, Nor Are They Undeserving Of Our Pity.

The Excitement Of Anticipation Was *almost* Equal To The Thrill Of Lovemaking.

All Men Are Liars, Said Roberta Muldoon, Who Knew This Was True Because She Had Once Been A Man.

The Unspoken Factor Is Love. The Reason I Can Work So Hard At My Writing Is That It's Not Work For Me.

I Don't Want You To Describe To Me—not Ever—what You Were Doing To That Poor Boy To Make Him Sound Like That; But If You Ever Do It Again, Please Cover His Mouth With Your Hand.

I Think The Sport Of Wrestling, Which I Became Involved With At The Age Of 14... I Competed Until I Was 34, Kind Of Old For A Contact Sport. I Coached The Sport Until I Was 47. I Think The Discipline Of Wrestling Has Given Me The Discipline I Have To Write.

I Have A Process That I Seem To Always, To Some Degree, As A Writer, Adhere To, But I Certainly Have Never Imposed The Way I Write A Novel On My Students. When I Had Students, I Never Said, "you Should Never Start Writing A Novel Until You Have The Last Sentence." I Never Did That, And I Wouldn't Do It Now, But People Now Seem So Interested In The Process [of Writing Fiction] That I Have To Constantly Make It Clear When I Describe Mine That I'm Not Being Prescriptive. I'm Not Proselytizing.

There's No Reason You Shouldn't, As A Writer, Not Be Aware Of The Necessity To Revise Yourself Constantly.

...i Suddenly Realized What Small Towns Are. They Are Places Where You Grow Up With The Peculiar-you Live Next Door To The Strange And The Unlikely For So Long That Everything And Everyone Become Commonplace.

Just When You Begin Thinking Of Yourself As Memorable, You Run Into Someone Who Can't Even Remember Having Met You

He Had In Abundance Youth’s Most Dangerous Qualities: Optimism And Relentlessness. He Would Risk Everything He Had To Fly The Plane That Could Carry The Bomb Within Him.

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.

We Often Need To Lose Sight Of Our Priorities In Order To See Them.

I'm Not Typing. I Write Only By Longhand. I've Always Written First Drafts By Hand And Then Once I Was Into A Second Or Third Draft I Wrote Insert Pages On A Typewriter. But I Got Rid Of All My Typewriters About Three Or Four Novels Ago And Now I Do Everything By Hand. I Write By Hand Because It Makes Me Go Slow And Going Slow Is What I Like.

People Only Ask Questions When They're Ready To Hear The Answers.

…there Was No More Safety To Be Found In Love Than There Was To Be Found In A Virus.

The History Of A City Was Like The History Of A Family—there Is Closeness And Even Affection, But Death Eventually Separates Everyone From Each Other. It Is Only The Vividness Of Memory That Keeps The Dead Alive Forever; A Writer’s Job Is To Imagine Everything So Personally That The Fiction Is As Vivid As Our Personal Memories.

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.

Never Confuse Faith, Or Belief — Of Any Kind — With Something Even Remotely Intellectual.

Crazy People Made Him Crazy. It Was As If He Personally Resented Them Giving Into Madness - In Part, Because He So Frequently Labored To Behave Sanely. When Some People Gave Up The Labor Of Sanity, Or Failed At It, Garp Suspected Them Of Not Trying Hard Enough.

Ever Since The Christmas Of 1953, I Have Felt That The Yuletide Is A Special Hell For Those Families Who Have Suffered Any Loss Or Who Must Admit To Any Imperfection; The So-called Spirit Of Giving Can Be As Greedy As Receiving-christmas Is Our Time To Be Aware Of What We Lack, Of Who's Not Home.

It's Not Right To Hurt Or Deceive Someone Who's Already Been Hurt And Deceived.

It Is Much Easier To Be Flexible About Where A Story Begins Than It Ever Was For Me To Change My Mind About Where And How A Story Ended.

All I Say Is: Let Us Leave Les Folles Alone; Let's Just Leave Them Be. Don't Judge Them. You Are Not Superior To Them - Don't Put Them Down.

People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough

If I Had To Be Anything," He Told Her, "i'd Probably Be A Socialist, But I Don't Want To Be Anything.

You Can't Say You're Going To Ban Something In The Name Of Good Taste, Because Then You Have Directed Someone To Play The Role Of Good-taste Police. We - Americans - Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It.

And I Don't Want To Begin Something, I Don't Want To Write That First Sentence Until All The Important Connections In The Novel Are Known To Me. As If The Story Has Already Taken Place, And It's My Responsibility To Put It In The Right Order To Tell It To You.

What Is Hardest To Accept About The Passage Of Time Is That The People Who Once Mattered The Most To Us Wind Up In Parentheses.

I Don't Begin A Novel Or A Screenplay Until I Know The Ending. And I Don't Mean Only That I Have To Know What Happens. I Mean That I Have To Hear The Actual Sentences. I Have To Know What Atmosphere The Words Convey.

The Ability To See The Future Can Be A Burden, And The Younger You Are And The More Isolated You Feel, Maybe The More Of A Burden It Is.

The Lie, Of Course, Is More Interesting.

A Personal Injustice Is Stronger Motivation Than Any Instinct For Philanthropy.

I Have A Friend Who Says That Reviewers Are The Tickbirds Of The Literary Rhinoceros-but He Is Being Kind. Tickbirds Perform A Valuable Service To The Rhino And The Rhino Hardly Notices The Birds.

Everyone Has A Right To Be A Little Happy, Asshole.

Safer Than We Are.” I Told Franny. “safer Than Love.” “let Me Tell Ya Kid,” Franny Said To Me, Squeezing My Hand. “everything’s Safer Than Love.

It Was A Sound Like Someone Trying Not To Make A Sound.

I Have Learned That The Consequences Of Our Past Actions Are Always Interesting; I Have Learned To View The Present With A Forward-looking Eye.

You Can Learn A Lot From Your Lovers, But-for The Most Part-you Get To Keep Your Friends Longer, And You Learn More From Them.

I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

And Father Said, “there Are No Happy Endings.” “right!” Cried Iowa Bob – An Odd Mixture Of Exuberance And Stoicism In His Cracked Voice. “death Is Horrible, Final, And Frequently Premature,” Coach Bob Declared. “so What?” My Father Said. “right!” Cried Iowa Bob. “that’s The Point: So What?” Thus The Family Maxim Was That An Unhappy Ending Did Not Undermine A Rich And Energetic Life. This Was Based On The Belief That There Were No Happy Endings.

This Is What Self-centered Religion Does To Us: It Allows Us To Use It To Further Our Own Ends.

We Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It - And Reward It In All Manner Of Ways.

I Am Doomed To Remember A Boy With A Wrecked Voice. Not Because Of His Voice, Or Because He Was The Smallest Person I Ever Knew, Or Even Because He Was The Instrument Of My Mother's Death, But Because He Is The Reason I Believe In God. I Am A Christian Because Of Owen Meany.

But Who Can Distinguish Between Falling In Love And Imagining Falling In Love? Even Genuinely Falling In Love Is An Act Of The Imagination.

Falling In Love

And Never Forget, There Is Memory.

Ted Seabrooke, My Wrestling Coach, Had A Kind Of Nietzschean Effect On Me In Terms Of Not Just His Estimation Of My Limited Abilities, But His Decidedly Philosophical Stance About How To Conduct Your Life, What You Should Do To Compensate For Your Limitations. This Was Essential To Me, Both As A Student - And Not A Good One - And As A Wrestler Who Was Not A Natural Athlete But Who Had Found Something He Loved.

A Writer's Job Is To Imagine Everything So Personally That The Fiction Is As Vivid As Memories.

He Also Knew That Rivals Are Best Unmanned By Being Ignored.

It Is Hard Work And Great Art To Make Life Not So Serious.

Homer And Candy Passed By The Empty And Brightly Lit Dispensary; They Peeked Into Nurse Angela's Empty Office. Homer Knew Better Than To Peek Into The Delivery Room When The Light Was On. From The Dormitory, They Could Hear Dr. Larch's Reading Voice. Although Candy Held Tightly To His Hand, Homer Was Inclined To Hurry - In Order Not To Miss The Bedtime Story.

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision.

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.

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

People Are Either Attracted To The Unseemly Or Disapproving Of It, Or Both; Yet We Try To Sound Superior To The Unseemly By Pretending To Be Amused By It Or Indifferent To It.

A Woman Half Dressed Seemed To Have Some Power, But A Man Was Simply Not As Handsome As When He Was Naked, And Not As Secure As When He Was Clothed.

Children Are Most Impressed With The Importance Of A Moment When They Witness A Parent Breaking The Parents' Own Rule.

If You Asked Me One Day, I Might Say, "well, Sometimes I Feel A Little Bit Religious." If You Asked Me Another Day, I'd Just Say Flat Out, "no."

It's Because Even A Good Man Can't Always Be Right, That We Need ... Rules.

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