It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.

The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.

Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.