I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.

Don't you ever feel that - that you just need to get away? From everything? That it's all too much?

My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.

You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.

...and our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage.

One of my da's tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.