Johnny Rich Quotes

Grief denied will surface in borrowed clothes, the mad, sad clothes of paranoia, fear or loneliness

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows

His suffering was no more real than he was.

Even Damocles developed a routine.

Adam & Eve have been degraded, reduplicated forever, photocopies of photocopies, mistakes copied, magnified, augmented.

Rejection is no badge of honour.

Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth.

I’ve often been criticised, but never critically wounded

A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.

He showed videotape of himself committing acts of self-violence and informing news crews that he had been assaulted by a marauding mob of irate art historians.

Silent is an anagram of listen.

Being gay is not just what I do, but who I am. It is part of how I choose to live my life even if I never chose.

Wouldn’t a no one do as well as a someone about whom nothing can be said?

So, my sweet, did it put the fun into funeral?

This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.

All life is preoccupied with death. Death is the only certain future. Yet in the face of reason, everyone holds out hope for the highly improbable.

Because he believed in himself, he believed what he did was important. Or maybe it was the other way around.

As thoroughly as mankind has killed God, the reader has despatched the author.

So who is cruel? You, cruel reader, you are.

I don’t see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself.

He did it because he could not help himself, which explains everything and nothing

To lose one parent might be considered a misfortune, or a reason to deny God’s existence at the least. To lose two looks like He may be up to something.

The future is certain. It is just not known.

A good book is not the same as a successful one.

Reality, it seems, is not a flat plane, but has as many veils as an onion has skins.

A novel must be judged on its merits, not on how hard the journey was to write it.

Actors," he says, "should only be superficial on the surface.

An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what they’re creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can’t make it better.

I feel underslept but overjoyed. Nothing feels so good as this.

To be mad is worse than not to be if this is what it is.

Even when I press against him his presence is too far away.

You know, sometimes I even envy myself.

You need to bridge the gap between reality and freedom. Drugs are the bridge.

Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book

It is a matter of mere coincidence that there is often a real individual who corresponds with a celebrity, signifies them.

Time passes. I drift in and out. As if I cease to be, until I remember to exist again.

That small difference made all the difference.

Is cruelty still cruel if it is necessary? Is cruelty still cruel if it is part of a lie?

These are the things you don’t say, even to someone you love.

To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.

Publishers are businesses and I don’t blame them for that. If they didn’t make money by publishing books, there wouldn’t be any books.

The bacteria of resentment bred: distance turned to distrust; distrust turned to bitterness; bitterness to hate, which is, after all, a kind of grievous love

Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.

I’m a bit-part actor in my own life

Job understood that he was nothing more than God’s invention and so too was his suffering

Good writing is more about graft and craft than inspiration and aspiration.

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end?

For someone to be perfect, they must be real, however imperfect they are.

The characters act for reasons that they can’t control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, we know it’s all just puppetry on the part of the writer.

The silence was pregnant with noise, with muted fury, with questions the father found too disgusting to frame and with answers to which the son was incapable of giving voice.

I guarantee it will change your life, but only because everything does, however small.

He thought of hanging himself, to pass the time.

I know everything must be a lie, but I believe it anyway.

Suffering is inevitable. It is part of the human condition. It is written in the human script.

Nothing is over our heads if we hold them high enough.

He’s a typical existentialist. And that’s a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.

Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.

Stories are just lies made to look like truth.

The only simple truth is that there is nothing simple in this complex universe. Everything relates. Everything connects

There’s no such thing as probability," she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do.