...people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too, only more so.

If the Holy Communion touched my teeth, I thought that was a mortal sin

Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life.

She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ's handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere.

I have some women friends but I prefer men. Dont trust women. There is a built-in competition between women.

I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love.

IT WAS TESS who told me about the crowd going to the all-night dance. We'd been school friends. We'd picked mushrooms and pretended to have seen a big ship. She had got married since I went away; it was a made match, a man from the midlands, a Donal, who had worked in a garage but took to farming, out all day, draining fields and callows so that he could till them and sow corn.