Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn fast.

We read to know that we are not alone.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.

I am as I am. The world is as it is. Whether I am content with that has very little to do with it.

I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me.

My study is a converted garage which is largely lined with bookshelves and cardboard boxes filled with manuscripts of my film scripts, plays and books.

The English seem to think drinking wine is like committing adultery, something you do rarely and abroad.

A well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever.

Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.

Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.

As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.

Hell’s got IT?Yes, of course. Who do you think invented Candy Crush?

Christ rises above all things.

Nothing comes cheap, though the educated eye will always spot very nice things for the least money.

Art doesn't alter things. It points things out, but it doesn't alter them. It can't, no matter what a painter wants to do.

To the Latin, cynicism and middle age are synonymous. Look at our politicians - they move through their careers from left to center to right, like the hands of a clock.

Being polite and grateful will make people more inclined to help you. And if people are willing to help you, you may accidentally get something you want.

Striving humbly but heroically to live by what is good, true, and noble in the midst of - and in spite of - the modern climate.

Every day is Christmas Day to a dog.

I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack.