Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I’m in better shape than they are.

Potential has a shelf life.

Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.

It isn't chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

In my dreams of this city I am always lost.

There is never only one, of anyone

Last night I felt the approach of nothing. Not too close but on its way, like a wingbeat, like the cooling of the wind, the slight initial tug of an undertow.

You cannot conquer the mind of a man, if you do not know his heart and you cannot win over his heart, if so you do not know his mind.

Life can be hard in the real world.

No matter how many times people try to criticize you, the best revenge is to prove them wrong.

History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.

He that dies before sixty, of a cold or consumption, dies, in reality, by a violent death.

Ireland has a role to play in making the E.U. united and strong.

It would be unthinkably bad luck to be betrayed by a rumbling stomach.

Let the mind come as it wants; just you don't go with it. The greatest salesman in the world cannot sell you if you don't buy.

Because the truth is - and we know it - we were born to die without regrets. Regret is the only wound from which the soul never recovers.

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.