Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.

August is a wicked month.

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.

In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.

It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.

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