James Frey quotes:

Whatever hardships there have been in my life I still live in a very privileged position. Fear is not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Fear is seeing a child get hurt. Fear is watching someone you love waste away. Fear is knowing you are going to die yourself. But there's no fear in what I do. I write books.

...if you can accept the truth and live with it your heart will be at peace.

Dreams can come true there [Los Angeles]in ways impossible anywhere else, and they can get destroyed as well.

It's the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?

When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

The afternoon and the early evening slide by in a lidded daze where the ability to think in any identifiable way disappears and where every moment seems to be an eternity.

America was first colonized by Puritans. Most of our earliest immigrants, and many since, have come here in order to practice their religious beliefs as they please. Our culture has always been, and will most likely always be, profoundly influenced by religion.

L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.

When I started writing 'A Million Little Pieces,' I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.

Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.

I don't want to walk in the middle. I want people to read what I write and feel strongly about it. If, at some point, whatever I am doing is failing to elicit a response, whether it's very positive or very negative, then I am going to stop doing it.

When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.

In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters

We live in a world that's very fast, where we get bombarded with huge amounts of information very quickly, and I have tried to tailor my voice to the times, which I think, writers, over the course of history - many have always done.

I am essentially optimistic. Being alive is incredible. Life is extraordinary and beautiful. It can be hard and sad and terrifying, but it's all we've got.

I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.

He tells me I look as if I could use a hugand i laugh at him and he ignores me and steps forward and puts his arms around me and hugs me. I warm at the simple pleasure of human contact and for the first time in a long time i actually feel good." (James Frey, pg.38)

There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live.

I've always wondered what it would be like if the Messiah, or Christ Returned, were actually alive and living in our society; who would that person be, how we would identify them, how would they live and what would they believe in, how would society react to them? I decided to try and tell my idea of that story.

The point of what I do is that it doesn't really matter what a book or a story is as long it moves you, informs you, challenges you, entertains you, or changes you.

I'm writing books. They're still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it's an interesting place to work.

Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.

I think, living in America, we're so bombarded with God all the time that in certain ways I'm making statements against that bombardment, you know? I think it's crazy. I mean, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I still think about it. And I still write about it.

In Lilly's eyes her beautiful clear water eyes there is what I have sought and never found, wanted and never had, hoped for and never discovered. Love.

I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things and not allowing things outside of myself to distract me or bother me or affect me in any way.

I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.

There is emotion in the hug, and there is respect and a form of love. Emotion that comes from honesty, respect that comes from challenge, and the form of love that exists between people whose minds have touched, whose hearts have touched, whose souls have touched. Our minds touched. Our hearts touched. Our souls touched.We separate.

The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.

Love only brought me lonliness and horror.

The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel. I broke something, Old Man. How badly is it broken? It's in a million little pieces. I'm afraid I can't help you. Why? There's nothing you can do. Why? It can't be fixed. Why? It's broken beyond repair. It's in a million little pieces.

I'm tired of making people sad and I'm tired of disappointing them and I'm tired of seeing them break. I have seen this too many times. He will be the last.

I hope nobody took the Razzle Dazzle Rose.

When I was a little boy, Marvin Hagler was my idol. He got no respect for most of his career. His fighting style was straight ahead. He took every shot thrown at him, and he kept punching back 'til he won. I honestly feel that's how I am. I take big shots from people. But I keep going.

I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable.I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.

Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.

You only live once, buy Picassos whenever possible.

I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I think about my life and how I ended up this way. I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.

Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says. Stay. Fight. Live. Take it.

Its not just a smile of momentary happiness. When it disappears from my face, it will stay with me.

I try to make the voice in my head come out onto the page. I try to make it much more conversational than other writing. I speak everything, so if something sounds right I write it. It's more about sound and the rhythm of speech than written language.

What is the meaning of life?Whatever you want it to be.

When I see you, the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you.

I always wanted to be the outlaw. And that's to a certain extent how I've lived.

There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.

I'm married, I have a couple kids, I've traveled a lot, I've done book tours a lot, I'm happy to stay home and take my kids to school and come to the office.

When something is staring you in the face in your life and you see it with your own two eyes and feel it within your heart only a fool doesn't believe it to be true.

About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.

And as ridiculous as it may sound, sometimes all any of us needs in life is for someone to hold our hand and walk next to us.

I don't speak with proper grammar. I don't speak with dialogue attribution. I don't speak with quotation. I don't care about any of that stuff. It's about rhythm, and it's about what's in their [the character's] head, and what feels more natural. And it's about speed. I want things to move.

Let things be, let yourself be, let everything be and accept it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.

There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing.

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

I have a great amount of confidence and faith in my abilities to write. There are other areas of my life where I'm not as confident, and have not as much faith, but when it comes down to writing and working, I don't worry about it. I trust myself to get it right.

There is no such things as God's word on earth. Or if there is it is not to be found in books. -Then where is it to be found?- In love. In the laughter of children. In a gift given. In a life saved. In the quiet of morning. In the dead of night. In the sound of the ocean, or the sound of a car. It can be found in anything, anywhere. It is the fabric of our lives, our feelings, the people we live with, things we know to be real.

The Bible was written two thousand years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age with interest with an acknowledgement of the historical importance but they should not be thought of as anything that has any value.

What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.

There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be.

Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.

We stare into each other's eyes and softly kiss speaking and saying more with the movement of our lips and the tips of our fingers than words will allow us to say. Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.

I felt like I had lost something. But not something silly, like my keys or my gum; more like my arm or my foot, something that really mattered. Like something that I could live without, but would make life much harder if it were missing. And life is hard enough. Life is hard enough with everything we're given.

Writing's not precious to me. It's not a thing that requires specific environment. You know, it's my job. Just like anybody with a job, you have to do your job when you don't feel like it, regardless of how good or bad the conditions are, regardless of how good or bad you might feel on any particular day.

Fear, he said, ran all of our lives. Fear, he said, after religion, was the most destructive force in the world.

Live and let live, do not judge, take life as it comes and deal with it, everything will be okay.

I've been alone my whole life, I can't do it anymore.

People don't want to accept the responsibility for their own weakness, so they place the blame on something that they're not responsible for, like disease or genetics.

I think men who can cry are strong men

I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.

She feels and she cries. It is to be admired.

I can run fast when I want to run fast, and I've always been good at destroying things.

The calm. If there is God or something Higher for me it is this. The calm. If there is something that will hold me when I need to hold it is this the calm. There is no anger, no rage, no Fury. There is no want, no need, no desire. There is no hatred no shame no regret. There is no grief, no sadness, no depression. There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live.

Most of the time, it's not the concept, but the execution of craft that counts.

I think God is something that people use to avoid reality. I think faith allows people to reject what is right in front of our eyes, which is that thing, this life, this existence, this consciousness, or whatever word you want to use for it, is all we have, and all we'll ever have. I think people have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard and depressing and brutal if you don't.

What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.

I have lived alone, I have fought alone, I have dealt with the pain alone. I will die alone. I think when I'm going to leave. I don't want to be seen and I don't want to be followed , I want to disappear quickly and quietly and without any drama , I want as much time in the darkness as I can possibly have . The darkness provides cover, the darkness provides places to hide and the darkness provides comfort.

The one word love means too little for what it is. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.

This moment and this chance, they are the same, and they are mine if I choose them,and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye, don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving.

I, however, like black. It is a color that makes me comfortable and the color with which I have the most experience. In the darkest darkness, all is black. In the deepest hole, all is black. In the terror of my Addicted mind, all is black. In the empty periods of my lost memory, all is black. I like black, goddammit, and I am going to give it its due.

But we are what we are, and humans will always hate.

I feel strong. Not strong enough to face myself, but strong enough to keep going.

I am aware that the battle I am fighting is a petty one, but I am also aware that in order to win that which is great, you must first win that which is small.

She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, it scared me to the point of paralysis.

I want as much time in the darkness as I can possibly have. The darkness provides cover, the darkness provides places to hide and the darkness provides comfort. Darkness usually comes around dinner, but dinner would be too obvious.

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag full of mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.

Being a writer now is about so much more than writing. There's publishing, touring, marketing, web presence.

But all good things come to an end, often a sad angry miserable end. The cause for such an end can usually be whittled down to one of three things: money, sickness, love lost.

I love the process of being alone in a room.

All of us started normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost.

Take the risk and do whatever you can do and try not to get caught. If you do get caught, do it again.

The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.

Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady.

Lying became part of my life. I lied if I needed to lie to get something or get out of something

I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed...

I will not allow people to impose rules on me that don't make sense to me. And I live and work very much outside the literary world and the literary system. What they think and what they believe and what their rules are mean nothing to me.

I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.

I don't care what people come at me with. People have come at me with everything you could imagine. I could care less about that.

I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.

If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.

You should at all times be showing a well-motivated character overcoming obstacles in pursuit of a goal.

Love is love. It doesn't matter how or who you love. I don't believe the messiah would condemn gay men and women.

My life is routine. I wake up early in the morning. I brush my teeth. I sit on the floor of the cell I do not go to breakfast. I stare at a gray cement wall. I keep my legs crossed my back straight my eyes forward. I take deep breaths in and out, in and out, and I try not to move. I sit for as long as I can I sit until everything hurts I sit until everything stops hurting I sit until I lose myself in the gray wall I sit until my mind becomes as blank as the gray wall. I sit and I stare and I breathe. I sit and I stare. I breathe.

To write a damn good thriller, you need a killer attitude.

I think as an artist or a writer it's OK to want to control your own work.

We know have the power of God in many ways: the atomic bomb, the ability to create life in a test tube, cloning, artificial intelligence.

I'm just going to write my books and do my work and release it. Let the world decide what it is, and if it's any good or not.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.

I just think it's a great world to tell stories in, to tell cool stories: money, sex, fame, and scandal. Those are great subject matters to work with.

Sometimes I really want to believe in God. I really admire, in a lot of ways, people who have faith. I think it must be a beautiful thing to believe.

The best stories are universal stories that have been told for as long as humanity has existed it's just figuring out new ways to do it, with language, with structure. And so I'm always trying to do that.

Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough.

I turn and I look back across the lake. The mist is gone and the ice diminished, the drip of the icicles quick and heavy. The sun is up and the sky is blue empty blue light blue clear blue. I would drink the sky if I could drink it, drink it and celebrate it and let it fill me and become me. I am getting better. Empty and clear and light and blue. I am getting better.

To live with angels and chase their dreams.

Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?

That's what ever great writer, I believe, has done over the course of time - is they've figured out new ways of telling the same stories.

More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if i wasn't alone.

Part of me still loves. More of me doesn't.

Light streamed through one of the windows and across her face and I have never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in my life. If my heart had stopped at that moment I would have fallen happy and fallen full and I would have seen in life all that I had wanted to see and all that I needed to see. Fall. Let me fall.