The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.

writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

...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.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.