How the prisoner and the immigrant are treated by the government, how the poor are treated and those without influence: this is secretly how the government would like to treat us all.

Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.

Everything is in the way the material is composed.

That each man is the sum of his choices is nothing less than the truth. And each, perhaps, is also something else.

...but as his father used to say when he had a few drinks taken, you couldn't expect bloody miracles when you were talking about God.

We still tell each other that we are lucky to be alive, when our being alive has almost nothing to do with luck, but with geography, pigmentation, and international exchange rates.

The tongue can cut deeper than the sword or heal faster than in the ward.

You can not argue with stupid but you can certainly play with it.

War was the ultimate chaos, a pounding, soul-destroying snarl, ending in blown-apart men lying unburied on the cold earth. There was nothing more cosmically chaotic than war.

Who ever said, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose that counts, ’ probably lost.

All of us are beautiful people, but we walk around just being people. I wanted real human beings.

People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.

Those who love are but one step from heaven.

All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once.

One could always do more, faster and cleverer, but democracy has its own rhythm.

If you can't write well then your ambition to become famous in this way will be frustrated. Either that or you have to get an amanuensis who will write for you.