“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.”

“It was from just a few sentences that a writer learned anything from another writer.”

“Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.”

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

“I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever.”

“In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?”

“Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties."(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)”