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

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.

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.

The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can't stop.

Words are made by history, we build them and they change meaning through time, but the music they play...

The lighter something is, the easier it is to darken it.

States like men have their growth their manhood their decrepitude their decay.

Liverpool Football Club is the heartland of football folklore

The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

The equatorial line is, in fact, the centre of atmospheric motion.

Teachers are everything. I mean, you're a poor kid from the ghetto, your parents are busy working 24/7, working like a Mexican.

A photograph has edges the world does not.

As the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all goods.