Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.

So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.

The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

The city was bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants too. It had its own nuances. It accepted whatever came its way, the crime and the violence and the little shocks of good that crawled out from underneath the everyday.