[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.

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.

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.

Silence sat in the taxi, as though a stranger had got in.

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.

[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.