“You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.”

“And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... and what your dreams are like.”

“It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting.”

“I don't believe in any actual thinking God that marks the fall of every bird in Australia or every bug in India, a God that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die - I don't want to believe in a God who would deliberately create bad people and then deliberately send them to roast in a hell He created-but I believe there has to be something”

“A coward judges all he sees by what he is.”

“Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.”

“As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read the scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term.”