There’s nothing I need or want to know from the writers I admire that isn’t in their books. It’s better to read a good writer than meet one. - John Irving

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.

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.

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.