Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

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

History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.

Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.