It's a dead give away of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do I tell you!

I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

What was sleep? A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance?

Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

That's the purpose of old age... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith it is one element of faith.

If frequency with which you cite an education credential does not decrease over the course of your life, you’re not accomplishing very much.

A single son endowed with good qualities is far better than a hundred devoid of them.

People always want to compare their dogs to having kids. That's insulting. First of all, nobody has a dog because they were too drunk to pull out.

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

When you are being what you really are you absolutely flourish in the midst of absolutely everything.

Don't try so hard to be hip. When the Church finds out what is cool, it is not cool anymore.

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. "Don't bother us with politics," respond those who don't want to learn.