“But listen to me, all three of you, n hear this if you don't hear nothing else: everything I did, I did for love . . . the love a natural mother feels for her children. That's the strongest love there is in the world, and it's the deadliest. There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”

“There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”

“I don't want to hear the scary part. But at the same time she does want to hear the scary part, everyone wants to hear the scary part, we're all mad here, and her mother really did say that if you told your dreams they wouldn't come true, which meant you were supposed to tell the nightmares and save the good ones for yourself, hide them like a tooth under the pillow.”

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.”

“My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can i do?""The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked."That's right," he reaffirmed. "And we have three children we're really concerned about. What do you suggest?""love her," I replied."I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore.""Love her.""You don't understand. the feeling of love just isn't there.""Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her.""But how do you love when you don't love?" "My friend , love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”

“I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one”

“And what about those [writers' workshop] critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. I love the feeling of Peter's story, someone may say. It had something... a sense of I don't know... there's a loving kind of you know... I can't exactly describe it....It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.”