In the sixties, dear Bill, we did not say 'top' and 'bottom' - we said 'pitcher' and 'catcher'...
In short,I might take seriously the idea of service to my country when my country begins to demonstrate that it gives a shit about me!
In schools—even in good schools, like Exeter—they tend to teach the shorter books by the great authors; at least they begin with those. Thus it was Billy Budd, Sailor that introduced me to Melville, w...
In every life, Dolores had said, I think there’s always a moment when you must decide where you belong.
If you can’t forgive your mother, Jack, you’ll never be free of her. It’s for your own sake, you know – for your soul. When you forgive someone who’s hurt you, it’s like escaping your skin – you’re th...
INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,’ he’d said over my mother’s grave; and so I say that one for him—I know it was one of his favorites. I am always saying prayers for Owen Meany. And
IF WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER FOUR SECONDS, WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER THREE, he said. IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH. It takes more practice, I told him irritably. FAITH TAKES PRACTICE, said Owen Meany.
I'll tell you what's wrong with dumb-shit patriotism--it's delusional! It signifies nothing but the American need to win
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeab...
I want to go on being a student, I told him. I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader, I said. DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED, he said. READING IS A GIFT.I learned it from you, I told him.IT DOESN'T MATTER W...
I really like the sex in your novels, Dorothy told him. I like how you do it. I like it better, Miriam said to him, giving her daughter an all-knowing look. I have the perspective to know what really...
I read the passage Owen had underlined most fervently in his copy of St. Thomas Aquinas— Demonstration of God’s Existence from Motion. I read the passage over and over, sitting on Owen Meany’s bed. Si...
I must part with you for my whole life, she read, with horror. I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes. The truth of that closed the book for her, forever.
I met him in the language lab. In a lull between lab sections, I was editing tapes for freshman German when this shuffling man of hair came in. Possibly twenty, or forty; possibly student, or faculty,...
I know three things. I know that my voice doesn’t change, and I know when I’m going to die. I wish I knew why my voice never changes, I wish I knew how I was going to die; but God has allowed me to kn...
I had acquired an undeniable mystique - if only to the Bancroft butt-room boys. Don't forget: Miss Frost was an woman, and that goes a long way with boys - even if the older woman has a penis!
I guess [Mrs. Reagan is] one of those many American adults of a certain advanced age who believe that the root of all evil lies in the area of young people's self-abuse. Someone should tell Mrs. Reaga...
I didn’t teach Ron Hansen or Stephen Wright or T. Coraghessan Boyle or Susan Taylor Chehak or Allan Gurganus or Gail Harper or Kent Haruf or Robert Chibka or Douglas Unger how to write, but I hope I m...
Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela’s empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dor...
Homer Wells, listening to Big Dot Taft, felt like her voice – dulled. Wally was away, Candy was away, and the anatomy of a rabbit was, after Clara, no challenge; the migrants, whom he’d so eagerly ant...