Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.

He glanced up once, eyes bored. “Please stop talking. I’m trying to eat.

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

Winning an argument is losing it as it makes the loser feel bad.

The crucial role of the rich in a capitalist economy is... to invest; to provide unencumbered and unbureaucratized cash.

To be in America illegally is actually a civil offense and not a criminal one.

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.

Every time I see a smiling person on earth, I feel the warmth of the Sun in the sky.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.

I'm blessed to have a little bit of success in football.

The only way to be loved is to be loveable, which really irritates me.