The day women stop reading — that’s the day the novel dies! - John Irving

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.

"If you're God's instrument, Owen," I said, "how come you need my help to stuff a basketball?"

(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action