I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Every man is his own hell.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

I wish I had been home more when the children were growing up. I missed a lot.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

I can be a cruel person.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals‘ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.