There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

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.

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.

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.

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

The most formative time of our lives are the years between birth and age 21, when we explore who we are and learn from those who surround us.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

As a calf follows its mother among a thousand cows, so the (good or bad) deeds of a man follow him.

Some people watching CNN were so shocked they started rioting. No, I'm kidding. No one watches CNN.

Ronaldinho did things that I've never seen anyone do.

Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.

We see with our brains, not with our eyes.

I wanted to be a soccer player; I wanted to do it at the highest level.