Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

What I have found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.

The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.

Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.

Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.