But at the very moment she was thinking these thoughts, adventure, as she afterwards told my Mother, was stalking her.

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?

There’s great beauty on this world if you just have the eyes to see it.

All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown.

Child and serpent, star and stone — all one.

If we are going to teach the world to stop hating the different, the other, then we’re going to have to start with children.

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate.

Tea is balm for the soul, don't you agree?

To enter the past is like poking a baseball bat into a spiderweb: it can't be done subtly or delicately.

I hate to lose. When I was a kid, I used to cry every time I lost a game, up until, like, the 8th grade. I used to go ballistic.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

The only thing championship about Wimbledon is its prestige.

But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news.

You've got to watch your mind all the time or you'll awaken and find a strange picture on your press.

Reality is hard. It is no walk in the park, this thing called life.

No sense in being a grifter if it's the same as being a citizen.

Economics is (now) about emotion and psychology.

I have no interest in maintaining a relationship with someone who didn’t love me enough to stick around.