If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

Sacrificers ... are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice. Oh, the sacrificers, they get it both ways. A person knows themselves that they're able to do without.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.

... in general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of trance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly.

Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.