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.

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

I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness.

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

Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life.

Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.

Irish Catholicism is very much founded on the stone of fear and of punishment.