Wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she kept reading it and reading it...
When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to step into? There are only creators of stories and characters in stories; there are no...
When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth - so effortlessly - we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play....
When they weren’t praying, they did what schoolgirls everywhere do. They laughed, they shrieked, they burst into hysterical sobs – all for no apparent reason… The schoolgirls also played the worst Wes...
What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attr...
We all go through a phase—it lasts a lifetime, for some of us—when we’re embarrassed by our parents; we don’t want them hanging around us because we’re afraid they’ll do or say something that will mak...
Wasn’t this the point Juan Diego had made repeatedly? Women readers kept fiction alive—here was another one. When Juan Diego had used Spanish in crying out the scholastic’s name, the Chinese girl knew...
Those who plead for the lives of the unborn should consider the lives of the living. ...the unborn are not as wretched or as in need of our assistance as the born! Please take pity on the born!
These same people who tell us we must defend the lives of the unborn-they are the same people who seem not so interested in defending anyone but themselves after the accident of birth is complete! The...
There were some very good books in the backseat of the little Volkswagen; good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands—you could not hold faith in Jesus in yo...
The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face; he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet s...
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...
That's actually happened?' Ruth asked.'Everything's happened,' the prostitute said.
That image of how the children can lift Owen over their heads in Sunday school—how he is light enough so they can easily pass him back and forth when the teacher is out of the room—is not only as near...
THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM, Owen said. He said that once—when Hester proposed abolishing the draft. IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT, said...
Since everything that is moved functions as a sort of instrument of the first mover, if there was no first mover, then whatever things are in motion would be simply instruments. Of course, if an infin...
She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child, and then at some appointed, prearranged time they seemed to stop the flow of affec...
Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn’t resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in...
Owen Meany had believed that his death was necessary if others were to be saved from a stupidity and hatred that was destroying him. In that belief, surely he was not so unfamiliar a hero.
Owen Meany believed that coincidence was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design –...