John

“when it comes to suicide bombers, everyone’s a first-timer.”
― Mick Herron, Spook Street

“Remorse, predictably, was the form taken by her distress, the merciless whipping that is self-condemnation, as if in times as bizarre as these there were a right way and a wrong way that would have been clear to somebody else, as if in confronting such predicaments the hand of stupidity is ever far from guiding anyone.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“If anybody asks, 'Can you do this job? Can you handle it?' you tell 'em 'Absolutely.' By the time they find out that you can't, you'll have already learned, and the job'll be yours. And who knows, it might just turn out to be the opportunity of a lifetime.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America