Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

...though one can be callous in Ireland one cannot be wholly opaque or material. An unearthly disturbance works in the spirit; reason can never reconcile one to life; nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.