Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.

... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

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.

One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences.

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

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