I feel like the writer observing the grief, but it is difficult to be detached from it.

My life is every moment of my life. It is not a culmination of the past.

A thing well done is worth doing.

There is only one immutable law in life - in a gentleman's toilet, incoming traffic has the right of way.

Sometimes silence resolves a conversation confused by Mad Misconstruction.

Gossip is more popular than literature.

The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

An Irishman will always soften bad news, so that a major coronary is no more than 'a bad turn' and a near hurricane that leaves thousands homeless is 'good drying weather'.

In life there exist two classes: first class and no class.

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

We may be pilgrims passing through this world, but let's not be grim-pills in the process!

So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to re-enact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intel-lect.

I believe in this country [the USA], I love this country, I believe in the idea of this country, and this country is an idea.

My father builds homes. So I grew up around the idea that you can take a piece of land, and you can bulldozer it and build new homes on it. You can create something new.

Seeing other people do great work is its own form of inspiration and far more powerful than borrowing their ideas.

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

I think a lot of things could be handled locally.

All that we do is touched with ocean, and yet we remain on the shore of what we know

Why would I want to read something about somebody that's just a really nice, decent person who overcomes terrible trials? That's not how life is to me.

The weariest and most loathed worldly life, that age, ache, penury and imprisonment can lay on nature is a paradise, to what we fear of death.