To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.

I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.

What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.

And the smell of the library was always the same - the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as 'the steam of the social soup.'

There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.

Murderers will try to recall the sequence of events, they will remember exactly what they did just before and just after. But they can never remember the actual moment of killing. This is why they will always leave a clue.

To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.