Don't sell your soul to buy peanuts for the monkeys.

There’s no snobbery like that of the poor toward one another.

The law is above the law, you know.

History's like a story in a way: it depends on who's telling it.

I don't approve the informality in the world today, Mr. James. It's made strangers of us all.

We reveal more of ourselves in the lies we tell than we do when we try to tell the truth.

No one who likes a song lacks congeniality.

Flattery makes fools of the best of us.

Beware of feelings, Father. They are the biggest liars in us. They make truth what we want it to be.

Very often adverse criticism goes to craft, and that sounds an alarm to which attention should be paid.

It's a great wonder to me, the Irish attachment to our history. What is it but a series of lamentations?

You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.

Doing nothing is even worse than doing the wrong thing.

It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.

I try to have all my characters have a sense of humor. To me the most interesting thing is a desperate character. I think desperation is funny.

It is only when you're lying to yourself or hating some aspect of yourself that you'll get an emotional charge from someone else's behavior.

There are really no serious arguments for communion in the hand. But there are the most gravely serious kinds of arguments against it.

A man without passion would be like a body without a soul. Or even more grotesque, like a soul without a body.

I have to drink a lot of fluids, try not to dehydrate, and keep stretching.

Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words.