For a good man fame is always a problem.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.

There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.

They are always saying God loves us. If thats love Id rather have a bit of kindness.