We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there wer….

Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everyt….

A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories..

There's nothing as scary as the future..

Keep passing the open windows..

If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product..

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious..

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it..

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist..

Human sexuality makes farcical our most serious intentions..

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else..

If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing i….

We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them..

It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived..

People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers..

. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . ..

I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry….

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail sto….

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Somet….

And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the ….

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves..