Quotes About Perspective

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

Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat.

You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves—to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!

Garp discovered that when you are writing something, everything seems related to everything else.

YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM, said Owen Meany. IT'S YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION THAT BORES YOU. HARDY HAS THE WORLD FIGURED OUT. TESS IS DOOMED. FATE HAS IT IN FOR HER. SHE'S A VICTIM; IF YOU'RE A VICTIM, THE WORLD WILL USE YOU. WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO'S GOT SUCH A WORKED-OUT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD BORE YOU? WHY SHOULDN'T YOU BE INTERESTED IN SOMEONE WHO'S WORKED OUT A WAY TO SEE THE WORLD? THAT'S WHAT MAKES WRITERS INTERESTING!

People regard art too highly, and history not enough

We aren't eccentric, we're not bizarre. To each other, we're as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family, even exaggerations make perfect sense; they are always logical exaggerations, nothing more.

It is simply amazing, at that age, when you're thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone.

When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States-I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota.

De alguna manera -había argumentado Garp- la vida es demasiado. La vida es un folletín melodramático no apto para menores, John

Isn't it perfectly possible that Nils and his wife are too depressed to have kids? The prospect of having kids depresses the shit out of me, and I'm neither suicidal nor Norwegian!

Readers vary, when it comes to having the imagination to enjoy a story outside their own experiences.

Jack realized that when you're happy – especially when it's the first time in your life – you think of things that would never have occurred to you when you were unhappy.

Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan's projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion.

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world!

I think you're being selfish." "What do you mean, selfish?" Wally asked. "A war is for your country, it's serving your country!" "To you, it's an adventure," Candy said. "That's what's selfish about it.

Ah, well... I started to say, and then stopped. So that was where he was going; I'd heard it before. Richard had told me that I'd not been standing in my mother's shoes in 1942, when I was born; he'd said I couldn't, or shouldn't, judge her. It was my not forgiving her that irked him-it was my intolerance of her intolerance that bugged him.

but you live your life at the time you live it—you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.

That's actually happened?' Ruth asked. 'Everything's happened,' the prostitute said.

worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales. Couldn't my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened by life on Earth?

As a fourteen-year-old, he'd not been old enough to have sympathy for her—for either the child or the adult that she was.

But you don't see with hindsight in a first draft. You have to finish the first draft to see what you've missed.

It sounds the same to me, Kid," Molly said. "The new lift takes you to the same old place. It's the same trip, just a faster ride—it's no more or less depressing than it ever was," she added.