If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. If what you are doing is not working, do something else.

I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.

Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.

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.

The Christ of Bethlehem is the Christ of Galilee, is the Christ of the Crucifixion, is the Christ of the Resurrection, is the Christ of the Eucharist

Beliefs: Those things we hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

Dublin was turning into Disneyland with super-pubs, a Purgatory open till five in the morning.

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.

Are we to have a church in which everyone's judgment is equal to everyone else's? That's not a church, it's chaos. Common sense dictates that you keep the fox out of the chicken coop.

It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.

My mother was an avid reader...She loved books about romance. Books that took place in faraway places and times. Stories with costumes...

When character speaks, many minds listen.

The secrets of evolution, are time and death. There's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.

You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within.

Don't assume your child is weak. If you, the parent, assume that they can't take anymore, what kind of signal are you sending them?

Every tyrant who ever lived has believed in freedom — for himself.

Life without an ideal is spiritual death.

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What more than madness reigns, when one short sitting many hundreds drains.

When the time is gone, you can never get it back.