Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.

The intensity of the football and how the people live football in Liverpool – it is not a usual.

I’m looking forward to the intensity of football and how the people live football in Liverpool. It’s a special club.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

I love football and the intensity of football in Liverpool, this is what is very good for me.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Some of the stories I admire seem to zero in on one particular time and place. There isn’t a rule about this. But there’s a tidy sense about many stories I read. In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don’t want it smoothed out.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

People think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don’t, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that’s fine, but I can’t work like that.

Some people love so hard that they can’t control those emotions when they’re at their deepest point.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

Drama usually has some sort of intense conflict.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

I always thought about working in England because of the kind of football, the intensity of football. Liverpool was first choice.

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it’s almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

Solemnity is proper in church, but things that are proper in church are not necessarily proper outside, and vice versa. For example, I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

My favorite writers have been those who’ve said things well.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It doesn’t always work, and one shouldn’t always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.