I'm a much nicer person since my wife died. I found out what pain is, so on that level I'm much nicer.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

As somebody once said, we're not punished for our sins, we're punished by them.

Gossip is more popular than literature.

I think with every writer there are two people there.

It's a natural thing for people to say, you know, Who's in this book? I find myself get ting a little defensive. People come along and I'm waiting for that first question.

I don't think anyone is the perfect one to play me.

I've always believed in survival.

We were married for almost 45 years. We fought all the time, it wasn't a great love or anything, it wasn't a great, all-consuming passion. She was just there. A lot of people were startled because we didn't seem devoted but we were.

I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else.

My life is every moment of my life. It is not a culmination of the past.

I went through life like an idiot for a great deal of the time, saying there's nothing I would change. That was a very arrogant thing to say. There's a lot I would change. There are people I would have steered clear of.

My mother was passionate. She was stubborn, the dominant one in the family. She dominated my father.

I came down to the living room one day and my wife was standing in the living room. It wasn't an illusion. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. The moment I saw her, she vanished.

The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.

A thing well done is worth doing.

I feel like the writer observing the grief, but it is difficult to be detached from it.

I'm a much nicer person since my wife died. I found out what pain is, so on that level I'm much nicer.

We are all the foolishness and all the crimes we did. We're also all the kindnesses we did. I hate to think of life as if we understood time. We don't understand time.

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

I've always enjoyed a woman's company more than men's. They're usually better looking.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain. I'm trying to live with this. You just have to accept it.

We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Imitation is the sincerest form of pain.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

I don't like painting flowers in my music. I like painting guts and pain.

Lives have been altered in fundamental ways, and later, after they acquire a more complete understanding of what goals are actually attainable, many are left facing a lot of pain and frustration. And yet, there's no culture of complaint.

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes.

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

Hush! Check those words. Do not cure ill with ill and make your pain still heavier than it is.

Pain is such an important thing in life. I think that as an artist you have to experience suffering.

This is a tough game. There are times when you've got to play hurt, when you've got to block out the pain.

I fell in love with Neil's pain. We were in this cocoon of intensity. Neil and I were uniquely in the same position at the same time, having overwhelming success facing us.

But all lost things are in the angels' keeping, Love; No past is dead for us, but only sleeping, Love; The years of Heaven with all earth's little pain Make Good Together there we can begin again, In babyhood.

You're lucky I took me a vow of non-violence, or you'd be suffering some pain right now.

Unborn children do not have a voice, but they are young members of the human family. It is time to look at the unborn child, and recognize that it is really a young human, who can feel pain and should be treated with care.