Laura van den Berg Quotes

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It's so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you're also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it's just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

I love that Barry Seal is working for the CIA, and he's an awful liar. It just goes to how honest this character is at the end of the day, even as he rips off the country and the world to the tune of becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. There's an innate honesty, a purity to him.

When I was working on 'Drown' - this was way back in the mid-'90s - I had this idea that I wanted to do another collected stories. I wanted to do another book like 'Drown' that focused specifically on infidelity.

On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

When my father made 'Jean de Florette' and 'Manon des Sources' back to back, everybody said, 'Why two movies?' But you need two movies to show how criminality evolves, and to tell the story: You can't show a man in love with so many women in one big biopic.

I would try to write my own story about some East Coast suburbanite having an affair or something like that. So I did that for maybe two years or so, and it just wasn't working for me at all.

The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity.

For the most part fraud in the end secures for its companions repentance and shame.

The world, as transformed by this creative deed, is better than it would have been had all else remained the same, but had that deed of treason not been done at all.

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

If a magician makes a mistake, it's sometimes forgiven by the audience. If a gambling cheat makes a mistake, they will almost certainly lose their lives - and probably in a horrible manner.

The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.

If you're living two lives and you're lying to everyone, you're bound to slip up, in some way, you're bound to get something wrong, and you're bound to get found out.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?

Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.

While forbidden fruit is said to taste sweeter, it usually spoils faster.

Had pretended to be Abbadon of the Dark, when always he had been working for the Light.

If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.

Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

Cheating gets easier every time it's done. It's only hard the first time, when one feels the sting of morality and the guilt of betraying someone's trust.

Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.

Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you're married and her name's Bertha

When truth kills truth, O devilish holy fray!

That whole Deep End experience of finding yourself with the dead body: you know you didn't kill it, but you know if you're found with it, you're gonna be done for it, so you have to get rid of it. And that's a really important nub of Young Adam — Joe knows for absolute certain that if someone comes around the corner, that's it. Nobody's ever going to believe what happened. So that has nothing to do with identity or sexuality, but that is a link. I'm just fascinated by it.

Eve left Adam, to meet the Devil in private.