What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses. - John Irving

The chairman of the state board of medical examiners was a retired physician who thought that President Teddy Roosevelt was the only other man in the world besides himself who had not been made from a banana.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.