Joseph O'Connor Quotes

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.

Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.

Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.

I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.

Beliefs: Those things we hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

Everything is in the way the material is composed.

Dublin was turning into Disneyland with super-pubs, a Purgatory open till five in the morning.

It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.

The most important thing I would learn in school was that almost everything I would learn in school would be utterly useless. When I was fifteen I knew the principal industries of the Ruhr Valley, the underlying causes of World War One and what Peig Sayers had for her dinner every day...What I wanted to know when I was fifteen was the best way to chat up girls. That is what I still want to know.

If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. If what you are doing is not working, do something else.

There is nothing worse than the ambitions of a talentless person.