literature is the last banquet between minds.

Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.

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

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

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

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

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