The best time to write is when your life is in the toilet. Writing offers an escape from your problems, so if you force yourself to write when you're in the doldrums, it will have the perverse effect of cheering you up. At the very least, it allows you to inflict your pain on your characters, which has the dual effect of giving them more depth while relieving your own tension.

You can never know too much about writing. If you think you know everything, you're not leaving yourself open to learn. . . . The best writers are always learning, exploring, and trying to improve.

A man is what he is and no fancy lodgings or fine clothes will change that (Daniel Brennan)

Sometimes the way to a man's heart is through his talleywacker.

No one in life can ever match fiction

I suppose if you were inclined to misbehave, you wouldn't exactly tell me the truth anyway." "Darling, you have a brother fond of holding a gun on me, a sister who can shoot anything that moves, two other brothers who've repeatedly threatened to thrash me, and a grandmother who buys off constables. Do you really think I'm fool enough to antagonize them by committing adultery?" It was hard not to smile at that. "An excellent point." "I think so.

Angel? Angels didn't sit on the lap of wicked scoundrels-not unless they were the fallen kind.