Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Don't be afraid to have nothing.
Friendships are an unforseeable burden.
Amen' is like the Send button on an email.
I enjoy being influenced by other writers.
I haven't been part of the criminal world.
There is something so arbitrary about prizes.
Losers blame their parents; Failures blame their kids.
I can't sit through dinner with somebody I don't like.
I didn't think anyone who had to demand respect ever got it.
The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.
I write fiction, there's no guarantee that what I say is truthful.
To have a child is to be impaled daily on the spike of responsibility.
I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.
...I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.
Sometimes they [people] throw off their freedom so quickly, you'd think it was burning them.
Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.
Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.
Raymond Chandler I love a lot, and the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I really love his voice.
I made some probably very cringe-worthy short films that shall hopefully never make the light of day.
I don't have a great respect for reality or getting the 'facts' as a means of putting together a story.
We were on our way to the twentieth floor, sharing the elevator with two suits that had men inside them.
When people come up to me and say, 'I read your book,' I'm thinking, 'How dare you! Who gave you a copy?'
There's only one common element that united every writer I've admired... they're all incredibly well-read.
Once a year I try writing a poem, usually because I've read some poetry that amazed me and I want to do that.
I actually went into writing first to supplement my income, which was a strange thing to do and actually failed.
I actually went into writing first to supplement my income, which was a strange thing to do, and actually failed.
I think that's the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential.
Optimism isnt funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. Its exaggeration.
I am influenced by books which dont have their eye on the endgame, but which try to be entertaining on each and every page.
Optimism isn't funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. It's exaggeration.
I am influenced by books which don't have their eye on the endgame, but which try to be entertaining on each and every page.
I was so happy I wanted to fold all the people into paper airplanes and fly them into the lidless eye of that big yellow moon.
People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.
What a nasty act of cruelty, giving a dying man his last wish. Don't you realize he doesn't want it? His real wish is not to die.
We're always sick and we just don't know it. What we mean by health is only when our constant physical deterioration is undetectable.
People carry their secrets in hidden places, not on their faces. They carry suffering on their faces. Also bitterness if there’s room.
I groaned. Man and his codes! Even in a lawless inferno, man has to give himself some honor, he's so desperate to separate himself from the beasts.
If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.
When you put so much effort to forget someone, the effort itself becomes a memory. Then you have to forget the forgetting, and that too is memorable.
Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.
[I'll teach you] how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain and how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated.
… she gave me a look that deftly combined tenderness with revulsion. To this day the memory of that look still visits me like a Jehovah’s Witness: uninvited and tireless.
When we finished the kiss she said laughing, I can taste your loneliness - it tastes like vinegar. That annoyed me. Everyone knows loneliness tastes like cold potato soup.
I know you're supposed to hide your influences, but I suppose I see writing as riffing, really, about whatever you have been reading or thinking about that day or that week.
As an artist you can use your own discomfort and neuroses and difficulties and at least transform them into something else. Without that you're just neurotic and uncomfortable.
There are a lot of artists that return to the same subject. Whether it's the natural subject, or the focus or the subconscious focus of their entire lives, it often is repeated.
After all, memory may be the only thing on earth we can truly manipulate to serve us, so we don't have to look back at ourselves in the receding past and think, What an arsehole!
If I've written five pages by hand, out of those five pages, one page might be worth saving. The rest is crap. I have to throw it away. It's like I need eight hours to do two hours' work.
Negotiating with memories isn't easy: how to choose between those panting to be told, those still ripening, those already shriveling, and those destined to be mangled by language and come out pulverized?
Let’s not mince words: the inside of the Sydney casino looks as if Vegas had an illegitimate child with Liberace’s underpants, and that child fell down a staircase and hit its head on the edge of a spade.