it is not good to repudiate the dead because then they do not leave you alone, they are like dogs that bark intermittently at night.

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.

Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me.

Writing is like carrying a fetus.

never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty.

... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.

Promiscuity is the death of love.

I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

A moderately bad man knows he is not very good

Your life isn't determined by your mistakes, but by your determination to keep going despite of them.

It's funny

Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too.

I hated turning 40; the whole idea of it stank. But once I got through it, I was fine.

The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.

If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones.

Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.