Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.

What makes a good family? Well, I suppose obviously love. Love lubricated often I think by humor. I think a family that can laugh at each other and tease themselves and who are able to be jolly with each other I think is the key.

You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children

An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

In a dung heap, even a plastic bead can gleam like a sapphire.

When you take a lot of cocaine powder you tend to take a lot of alcohol with it as well, so for many years really I never went out without at least four or five grams of cocaine powder.

All we have to do is listen. The Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth, my dear white-headed mother used to say.