What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.

And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?

The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.

Let my country die for me.

I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.

My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.