The truth of art consists in its power to break the monopoly that those in power exercise by defining what is real.

If there is a distinctive Irish experience, it is one of division, exacerbated by the fact that division in a country so small seems perverse. But the scale doesn't matter.

Knowing that language has done so much, we want to believe that it can do everything.

Through engagement with others, literature lets us imagine what it would be like to be differe.

A critical discourse that had respect for the mystery of art would look to the sense of life which finds expression in paradox, metaphor, tautology, and syntax.

There is no good reason to suppose that whatever can be felt can be expressed in words, or indeed in any articulate form.

What else has kept any of us going, but love of someone or the memory of that love?

I would define morality as enlightened self-interest...That old Platonic ideal that there are certain pure moral forms just isn't where we are.

I can't remember the last live-action, non-animated Christmas movie.

... sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.

How you live your life is a testimony of what you believe about God.

Chronic disease like a troublesome relative is something you can learn to manage but never quite escape.

Reason is the shepherd trying to corral life's vast flock of wild irrationalities.

Iraq has no history of ethnic conflict.

My first thoughts are that I should not let people down, that I should support them and love them.

Tomorrow doesn't really exist.