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

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

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

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.