“They rise highest who lift as they go.”

“A gun is psychologically a penis-substitute and a symbol of power: the age-range of toy-shop clientele begins at about six or seven, rises sharply just before puberty and declines soon after the discovery of the phallus and its promise of power. From then on, guns are for kids and for the effete freaks and misfits who must seek psycho-orgasmic relief by shooting pheasants.”

“I tell you, my idea of a ghost is something quite different. Dead men rise up never – read even your poets. Ghosts breed in the living.”

“It's like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week's chemotherapy and you're in a ward with people who are really, actually dying, there and then and doing their best to come to terms with it. When the week's up, you go home and you see your family and your friends and everything's normal and familiar. It's too much. You think - one world can't possibly hold both these lives and you feel like you're going to go crazy when you realise the world is that big and it can fill with the most terrible things whenever it wants to.”

“There are two types of people in the world. There are the people who understand instinctively that the story of The Flood and the story of The Tower of Babel are the same thing, and those who don't.”

“We’re going bowling?’ I can’t keep the disappointment of of my voice. Bowling is not badass.”

“It's never too late to be who you were meant to be.”