No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life--the first twenty years of it--had about them something semi-fictitious.

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?

Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

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