Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

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.

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.