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.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak.

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

One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.

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.

I can't see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they're the same thing.