Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.