There was always a real reason for everything - why spoons tarnished, and jam furred, and people declined into God, or drink, or card games.

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

Ideally I'd like to spend two evenings a week talking to Proust and another conversing with the Holy Ghost.

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

shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but never yet the one true love.

Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.

Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.