An Irishman can be worried by the consciousness that there is nothing to worry about.

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.

Patience is the analogue of God's serenity.

Some folks never handle the truth without scratching it.

If you sit by the wayside waiting for Success, your knees will be too stiff to follow her when she passes.

Love is a boomerang that returns to the thrower's hand.

The bigger the dam of patience, the worse the flood when the dam breaks.

We use religion like a trolley-car--we ride on it only while it is going our way.

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

Show me a genuine case of platonic friendship, and I shall show you two old or homely faces.

A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.

You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.

Then came nightthat was like falling water.At times, for hours, a bird spirit, half buzzard, half swan, just above the rushesfrom which a snow-storm howls.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

At that time, when I started, in the '50s, cinema was very classical in its aims.

Back before the internet we had a name for people who bought a single copy of our books and lent them to all their friends without charging: we called them "librarians".

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.

I watch a lot of sports. But when I'm not working, I'm with my daughters every chance I get.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

I'm not immune to the charms of the female form. And when I was 17 and I spent every spare minute surfing, most of the girls we hung out with would be topless.

I think that's one of the great things about the travel. One day I am at home in Sheffield, the next day I'm playing the Hollywood Bowl. It's extraordinary.