It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

You can do anything you want to do, if you want to do it bad enough.

For now, I will say that God endowed humans with a great many powers and forces, and some of the creative, constructive powers can only be passed on through channels of others.”The Guardian

Betrayal dressed in love and trimmed with the facade of good intentions is the most barbaric of all betrayals.

Besides, humans aren't prey. They are our natural enemies. They are to be avoided.

Courting Peggy McGrath provided me with a very pleasant diversion and eventually with the most important relationship of my life.

Suffering will get you great footage. I don't know about closer to God. Although there have been times when I've suffered to the point where I think I might be about to meet him.

Everyting negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.

Write it as it is, don't try to make it like this or that. You can't do it in anybody else's way-you will have to make a way of your own.

We are the only animals who steal and drink the milk from other species.

Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest.