Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 11

However, on one occasion, several years ago, I was idiot enough to take a dose of LSD. (I did it to please a woman.) I had what is known as a 'bad trip'. It was a very bad trip. I shall not attempt to describe what I experienced on that dreadful and rather shameful occasion. (I will only add: it concerned entrails.) In fact it would be extremely hard, even impossible, to put it properly into words. It was something morally, spiritually horrible, as if one's stinking inside had emerged and become the universe: a surging emanation of dark half-formed spiritual evil, something never ever to be escaped from. 'Undetachable,' I remember, was a word which somehow 'came along' with the impression of it. In fact the visual images involved were dreadfully clear and, as it were, authoritative ones and they are rising up in front of me at this moment, and I will not write about them. Of course i never took LSD again.
Iris Murdoch
Werewolves and silver bullets!” Shakespeare coughed a quick laugh and shook his head. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Michael Scott
People often say to me: Oy! Get out of my garden.
Michael Redmond
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Oscar Wilde
Memories were fine but you couldn't touch them, smell them or hold them. They were never exactly as the moment was, and they faded with time.
Cecelia Ahern
Know a man by his metaphors.
John Connolly
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals not with events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind...The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamor of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, books written, and marble hewn into form.
Oscar Wilde
I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare but then I thought Why should I? He never reads any of mine.
Spike Milligan
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghost-woman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will.
James Joyce
Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.
Oscar Wilde
Circumstances are the rulers of the weak they are but the instruments of the wise.
Samuel Lover
Is he all scarred now?”“Magic gets rid of most physical scars, but I like to think I scarred him emotionally.
Derek Landy
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
A statesman is an easy man He tells his lies by rote A journalist makes up his lies And takes you by the throat So stay at home and drink your beer And let the neighbours vote.
William Butler Yeats
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skills. Our antagonist is our helper.
Edmund Burke
How is that for some people drinking is a short-term loan on the spirit, but for others a heavy mortgage on the soul?
Sebastian Barry
I understand perfectly. Darquesse isn't a separate entity. She isn't another person. She's you. If you make the wrong choices, if you stop loving the people who love you, if you allow the world to twist and turn and change you, then yes, the future we've seen will come to pass. But if you fight, and if you kick, and struggle, and refuse to give in to the apathy, or the anger, or the hopelessness, then you'll change the future, and you'll walk your own path. And I'll be right there beside you, Valkyrie. I'll always be beside you.
Derek Landy
Love doesn't demand perfection, but it does ask you to give yourself with less reserve than you'd prefer.
Thomas Moore
I love that an idea can be so powerful it doesn't matter whether I've seen the artwork for real or not.
Sara Baume
Are ALL men bad?Oh, all of them, my dear, all of them, without any exception. And they never grow any better. Men become old, but they never become good..
Oscar Wilde
Kami got to school the next day without any incidents like being kidnapped by pirates or having the earth open up and swallow her, which on the whole Kami thought was a pity.
Sarah Rees Brennan
An excuse is a lie guarded.
Jonathan Swift
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,Live fairy-gifts fading away,Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,Let thy loveliness fade as it will,And around the dear ruin each wish of my heartWould entwine itself verdantly still.It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,That the fervor and faith of a soul may be known,To which time will but make thee more dear!No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,But as truly loves on to the close,As the sunflower turns on her god when he setsThe same look which she turned when he rose!
Thomas Moore
Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.
George Bernard Shaw
(Streets of Sorrow)Oh, farewell you streets of sorrowOh, farewell you streets of painI'll not return to feel more sorrowThrough the years I've lived through terrorAnd in the darkened streets, the painOh, how I long to find some solaceIn my mind, I curse the strainSo, farewell, you streets of sorrowAnd, farewell, you streets of pain
The Pogues
Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know.
Eoin Colfer
The Theory of Evolution has more holes in it than a dam made out of Swiss cheese.
Eoin Colfer
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dr
W.B. Yeats
The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
Oscar Wilde
Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh.
Bram Stoker
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
Oscar Wilde
My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacr
George Bernard Shaw
Everything is in the way the material is composed.
Joseph O'Connor
She expected no judgement and wanted no pity.
Colum McCann
If you were me, then I'd be you, and if I were you, then I'd hide somewhere far away.
Eoin Colfer
There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.
Oscar Wilde
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
Oscar Wilde
Men and women find all sorts of ways to be together, all sorts of ways. Yours was high and dangerous. Most of us stay on the lower paths.
Josephine Hart
Was that his name? I never had a chance to ask. He was too intent upon tearing out my throat for us to engage in idle chitchat.
John Connolly
After finishing 1st draft of a novel, I have the characters, dialogue, scenes, and a plotline. I used to think this meant I knew where the story was going, and what the book was about.I have learned over the years, this ain’t so.As I work through its 2nd draft, characters start to nudge each other. The story itself takes its first soft and shallow breath, and one could imagine he hears a little bit of a heartbeat. Passions deepen, and emotional threads start to weave through what had earlier just been little more than a sequence of events.On the 3rd run through, the characters stand tall. Some break free of my earlier concepts of what they were all about, what they wanted, how they related to each other, and where they were going.From then on, THEY set the pace, and I do my best to honor them in becoming what THEY choose to be.From then on, my friends; we have a story!By the end of the 3rd draft, I have enough of an idea of where the characters are going, and how their passions empower the story, or tear it apart, that I can start cutting away, and cutting away, anything that isn’t that.Until we reach the point where there is not a single word left anywhere in the book, that isn’t a vital, dynamic, organic contributor to the living whole.
Edward Fahey
Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction.
Oscar Wilde
THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; And if any gaze on our rushing band, We come between him and the deed of his hand, We come between him and the hope of his heart. The host is rushing ’twixt night and day, And where is there hope or deed as fair? Caolte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away
W.B. Yeats
A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
Edmund Burke
Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.
Colum McCann
People come and go.
Cecelia Ahern
So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly.
Hazel Gaynor
Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.
Colum McCann
A condensed Shakespeare with all of the dull parts removed, leaving only the great moments of drama: ghosts, and bloodied daggers, and dying kings.
John Connolly
I'm miles from where you areI lay down on the cold groundAnd I, I pray that something picks me upAnd sets me down in your warm arms.
Snow Patrol
And we all know how ladies get minks . . .”Popsy and Sandra chorused the answer together. “The same way minks get minks!
Suzy Duffy
With my arms wrapped around Rosebud, I dreamed of heather-topped hills and sleepy valleys and a pretty woodland stream where dragonflies danced across the water as I sat down among the ferns and the meadowsweet, waiting for the summer to find me.
Hazel Gaynor
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
Oliver Goldsmith
As so often happens in my strange writing process, after weeks of distraction; of not thinking about the book at all; yesterday I started writing before the sun was up, or coffee was made. Whipped out a whole chapter of probably six or seven separate scenes in less than two hours. Now today, the whole story has slipped into a deeper level of knowing and connections than has (as far as I know, anyway) ever really been written about before. This is much as my experience was with Ailana, when I kept slipping into deeper and deeper gears. Bringing forth insights I myself had never learned or suspected.
Edward Fahey
Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.
Elizabeth Bowen
No passion so effectively robs the mind of its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke
I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.
Samuel Beckett
One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there.
Tana French
I'm a drinker with writing problems.
Brendan Behan
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
That night, I fell into a deep, travel-weary sleep, lulled by the familiar sound of the waterfall beyond the window. I dreamed of the beck fairies, a blur of lavender and rose-pink and buttercup-yellow light, flitting across the glittering stream, beckoning me to follow them toward the woodland cottage. There, the little girl with flame-red hair picked daisies in the garden, threading them together to make a garland for her hair. She picked a posy of wildflowers- harebell, bindweed, campion, and bladderwort- and gave them to me.
Hazel Gaynor