“If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.”

“MADE FOR TELEVISION.”

“She drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch – it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen – and what she imagined there was on TV appalled her.”

“Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean––make sure they know what they mean!”

“don't worry - so what if there is no life after death? There is life after Garp, believe me.”

“Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.”

“The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. ”