A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time.

Not watching TV gets me in a lot of trouble in my household because my wife and daughter have a lot of shows they like to watch.

Ireland starts for me with the end of The Dead, which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.

What’s old doesn’t need to be old-fashioned. It gets reborn.

Reporting provides reminders that things are always more complicated than you think.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

At GQ, there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want.

Freaky things happen all the time in the world. I suppose everything has to happen for the first time at some point.

The city of Cork - the urban center, where all the shops and bars and everything are - is actually an island, a river island.

I'm just saying, take courage. That and pretty much that alone is never the incorrect thing to do.

Men who have nothing to lose never give a thought for eternal life.

Do not create opportunities for beasts and evils to take charge of your life.

One of the happiest days of my life was when I quit waiting for "happily-ever-after" to come find me and proclaimed joy in the just now season of life. And the next season. And the next.

Now we live in fairyland. The only lightly disappointing thing about this land is that it is smaller than the real world has ever been.

Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.

Although it was the middle of winter, I finally realized that, within me, summer was inextinguishable.

Each day I also try to draw. It's a similar expulsion of buildup: Milking the cows every morning. Checking the chickens' eggs. Why should that be limited to a certain medium?

Seek a happy marriage with wholeness of heart, but do not expect to reach the promised land without going through some wilderness together.

The mind reproduces itself by transmitting its symbols to other intermediaries, human and mechanical, than the particular brain that first assembled them.

Dance music is an emotional journey. It's how well you can make people feel something that they haven't felt.