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

The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag.

One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.

I usually need a can of beer to prime me.

You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.

There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

Great sex is apocalyptic. There is no such thing as great sex unless you have an apocalyptic moment.