...though one can be callous in Ireland one cannot be wholly opaque or material. An unearthly disturbance works in the spirit; reason can never reconcile one to life; nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.

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

The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.

Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.

Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.