The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

children like change - for one thing, they never anticipate regret.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.

Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.

My writing, I am prepared to think, may be a substitute for something I have been born without - a so-called normal relation to society. My books are my relation to society.

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