How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

We are here not to make something of ourselves. We are here to Be ourselves.

When we quarrel how we wish we had been blameless.

I don't really think so much of what kind of man I am. I just do what I like and enjoy, and let other people think what they want.

Brad [Pitt], poor geezer, was blown up, thrown around, burned, slapped, frozen. But never a moan or a whine. Now that's what I call a real star.

I think that sexual oppression and dictatorship go hand in hand.

The prison is the state writ small.

I can only see it going one way, that's my way. How it's actually going to go I can't really say.

I realised that you don't have to jump through a series of complicated hoops to achieve a goal.

I'd want to have the power of mind control. If I had that one skill you'd always see at the bank loading up bags full of cash.

Against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution