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.

We read to know that we are not alone.

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

Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn fast.

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.

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.

If you’re not scared every day, you’re not pushing hard enough.

Roses bloom whether you praise them or not.

When angry count four when very angry swear.

I breastfeed and I'll be breastfeeding until my son is finished and he weans.

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.

The truth. The dead want nothing else. It is the only thing that they require.

Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

The importance of writing in the breakdown of the bicameral voices is tremendously important. What had to be spoken is now silent and carved upon a stone to be taken in visually.

I didn't just jump back on the bike and win. There were a lot of ups and downs, good results and bad results, but this time I didn't let the lows get to me.

There is nothing you cannot be, there is nothing you cannot do. There is nothing you cannot have.