But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each … - John Irving

Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label — to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.

Did the rhythm of the train on the tracks somehow unravel her and make her behave out of character? Was she altered in transit, when her feet were not upon the ground?

What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television's dominance of our culture — for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime — and of all holy-seeming innocents — that televisions achieves its deplorable greatness.