--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

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.

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

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.

Stay here with me, Trishy. Don’t go back to your old life. Make a new one, here. With me. I know it’s a hell of a big thing I’m asking—but I’m asking. Stay.- Joe

I don't make friends based on how big their pockets are or how well connected they are

No, that was my privilege.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

This is my best time of the year (spring training). Heck, once the season starts, I go to work.

A single girl must lead a double life don't you think?

If by saying that all men are born equal, you mean that they are equally born, it is true, but true in no other sense; birth, talent, labor, virtue, and providence, are forever making differences

I think that it's sexier not to show everything. I feel that people's imaginations can do way more.

I'm not that obsessed with making representations of ugliness. Everything I've seen is beautiful.

Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.