I adore my family. I don't love their politics. I think they're wonderful parents. They were dreadful at parenting.

You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you’d never, ever stop grieving.

How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or live in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.

I am becoming increasingly difficult to please as a reader, but I adore being surprised by a really wonderful book, written by someone I've never heard of before.

This is not a full circle. It's life carrying on. It's the next breath we all take. It's the choice we make to get on with it.

What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us.

I love my mother so much, because I see the whole of her.

It's a long day's drive any way you look at it. With a man who has taken your sins - real and imagined - and stitched them onto the sackcloth of his own soul, it is endless.

I always knew mum loved me - tough, look-after-yourself love, as if she knew she wouldn't always be there.

I had the constitution of a missionary.

In ways I don't entirely have the words for an experience, thought or a lesson isn't real for me until I've written down.

Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

Country music especially can get very formulaic - you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road.

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

Is Heather McDonald your best friend? You better get a new one.

I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I don't have a lot of respect for in particular one of the leaders. But that's OK. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

In the newspapers there is insulting and stirring up hatred. Those irresponsible daubers!

I'm not a good-looking guy. I don't care if my nose gets mashed.

All my friends got dogs and cats for Christmas, and I got a starfish called Roy. I used to take him down to the park on a lead.

I've never been hurt by a sea creature, except for jellyfish and sea urchins.