“Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.”

“but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.”

“If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?”

“It's a lady with a stick. Are we pirates or what?" They pondered this fact for a moment."It's a big stick," observed one of his fellows.”

“They were not friends, Comdrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Matthew, and they didn't trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly, adult. They looked out into the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine.”

“Why couldn't people's insides match their outsides? The world would be such a wonderful place if the nicer someone was, the more beautiful they became.”