They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.

Love her as in childhood Through feeble, old and grey. For you’ll never miss a mother’s love Till she’s buried beneath the clay.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all -- we were wet.

I'm not one of those James Joyce intellectuals who can stand back and look at the whole edifice... It was a slow process for me to just crawl out of it, like a snake leaving his skin behind.

Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.