If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.

If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.

Stories are like assholes. Everybody's got one and most of 'em stink.

I haven't got anything against cats. I haven't got anything against elk either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep one in the store so I'll have a place to hang my hat.

My mother's father was from Sligo, and he used to say it was the hardest thing in the world to find a man alive in Dublin who wasn't in the GPO during the Easter Rising. Twenty brave men marched into that post office, he said, and thirty thousand marched out.

One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.