History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Fall if you will, but rise you must.

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.

Absence, the highest form of presence.