“There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.”

“Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.”

“Anyway, it’s best not to think about them, as if you do it makes the discussions with the other lawyers, all their advice and all that they do manage to achieve, seem so unpleasant and useless, I had that experience myself, just wanted to throw everything away and lay at home in bed and hear nothing more about it. But that, of course, would be the stupidest thing you could do, and you wouldn’t be left in peace in bed for very long either.”

“What do you want Phoenix?""I'm going away for a while. I wanted to say goodbye." He smiled, but it was empty. There was nothing there."Fine, goodbye.”

“Do you ever want to talk away from your life?... Do you ever think this life is not exactly what you had planned? Do you ever crave something, anything that could wake you up?”

“To succeed is nothing, it's an accident. but to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character”