yEvery man's endeavor was imbued with responsibility

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.

This is what I call life: a woman to love, a job to do, and a cause to fight

I try to challenge myself as much as possible, as often as possible.

The truth of a man is first and foremost what he hides.

We have discovered that the scheme of 'outlawing war' has made war more like an outlaw without making it less frequent and that to banish the knight does not alleviate the suffering of the peasant.

Not everyone who has a savant skill I would equate with a genius.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

Beauty,’ Brimstone had scoffed once. ‘Humans are fools for it. As helpless as moths who hurl themselves at fire.

I definitely wouldn't shy away from doing another action based project, but I feel like my forte is more like playing real, ordinary people. I'm a girl's girl.

I can't remember. . . . My character was sort of unconscious for it.