If you're lucky enough to fall in love, that's one thing. Otherwise all that was ever truly beautiful to me was boyhood. It's the meal we sup on for the rest of our lives. Love puts the icing on life. But if you don't find it...you must call on your childhood memories over and over till you do.

Usually a good part of the people trying it end up not making it.

You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.

Miss Abigail, I want to be an author because writers know when a person is lonely. I mean, when Molly read me some books, those writers reached out and said, Look Gideon, we know about your loneliness and we know you're feeling downtrodden. And they said...I'll stand up for you. You're not lone anymore.

All you have the right to ask of life is to choose a battle in this war, make the best you can, and leave the field with honor.