Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.

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

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

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

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.