It was a scary thought. A man could be surrounded by poetry reading and not know it.
What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?
…he had to comfort himself with the firm conviction that most of what he objected to in Mohawk and the world at large was not the result of people reading the wrong books, but rather of not reading any at all.
Nor do I want the woman that I’m married to and that I love to leave me, but the thought of her doing so moves me in a way that our growing old together and contentedly slipping, in affectionate tandem, toward the grave does not.
Max would conclude, “that’s who I want to be. The pope. And I’ll do the same thing he does. I’ll keep all the goddamn money.
He’d meant to forgive his brother, maybe even imagined he had. He’d also meant to learn to trust him, but instead merely fell into the habit of waiting for him to fuck up again.
What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.
An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental.
It’s not an easy time for any parent, this moment when the realization dawns that you’ve given birth to something that will never see things the way you do, despite the fact that it is your living legacy, that it bears your name.
To weigh and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed at.
Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness.
Stories worked much the same way…A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.
You can’t possibly judge your ability to control something until you’ve experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?
One of the odd things about middle age…was the strange decisions a man discovers he’s made by not really making them.
To his surprise he…discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something…that you cared about a great deal.
Like many men addicted to sports, Clive Sr. was also a religious man.
Miles smiled. “Can you keep a secret?”Bea snorted. “Did I tell you what you were in for if you married my daughter?””No,” Miles conceded.”Well, then,” she said, as if that settled the matter.
At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don’t really think of myself as ‘writing humor.’ I’m simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.
I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard.
HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned.
Truth be told, I’m not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it’s been my experience that most people don’t want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.
I don’t think there’s a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I’ve got other stories to tell.
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don’t have a lot of sympathy for because I’m just going to be with them too long.
My books are elegiac in the sense that they’re odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.