Sacrificers are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those they sacrifice.

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

without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold.

There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

We have really no absent friends.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.