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

I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.

The Irish landowner, partly from laziness but also from an indifferent delicacy, does not interfere in the lives of the people round. Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland, but these cannot operate the whole time: on the whole, the landowner leaves his tenants and work-people to make their own mistakes, while he makes his.

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.

Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?