...I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so… - John Irving

"Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news — the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers — at great cost to the rest of your life."

don't worry - so what if there is no life after death? There is life after Garp, believe me.

In this dirty minded world, you are either someone's wife or someone's whore.