Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 49

No matter how far I try to travel from people, people always appear. Either they follow me, or they're already there, and I followed them, unwittingly.
Sara Baume
Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.
Oscar Wilde
It is better to read a little and ponder a lot than to read a lot and ponder a little.
Denis Parsons Burkitt
Mike wished Mr. Burden had chosen another time to be murdered. He was beginning to see that the hour of dressing for dinner might have been expressly designed for persons who need a quiet spell for the commission of crime.
Eilís Dillon
And you don't ever have to worry about what I feel. The way I feel about you won't change. You can do whatever you like to me. You could turn this town to dust, burn the woods until they were cinders, you could cut out my heart. It wouldn't matter. It would not change a thing.""What if I ate a baby?"Jared's mouth curved up at the corners, slow and not cruel at all. "I'm sure you'd have a good reason," he said.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Have you shat, my child, I said gently.
Samuel Beckett
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde
I don't like lollipops.
Eoin Colfer
There's something different about you," he says."I've started styling my hair differently," I laugh."Oh. I thought it was that you were three feet taller, a hell of a lot broader, look like a werewolf, and are naked expect for that bit of cloth around your waist. But you're right - it's the hair.
Darren Shan
The first springs of great events like those of great rivers are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift
Victor Vigny: A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.Conor Broekhart: Which resembles a giant banana.
Eoin Colfer
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.
Bram Stoker
I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.(Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.)Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.
Samuel Beckett
People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.
Marian Keyes
My gods dwell in temples made with hands.
Oscar Wilde
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
Oscar Wilde
Mid-Term BreakI sat all morning in the college sick bayCounting bells knelling classes to a close.At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.In the porch I met my father crying—He had always taken funerals in his stride—And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramWhen I came in, and I was embarrassedBy old men standing up to shake my handAnd tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,Away at school, as my mother held my handIn hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.At ten o'clock the ambulance arrivedWith the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.Next morning I went up into the room. SnowdropsAnd candles soothed the bedside; I saw himFor the first time in six weeks. Paler now,Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.
Samuel Beckett
Your heart can break at any age.
Cecelia Ahern
Unless you know the code, it has no meaning.
John Connolly
I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Oscar Wilde
In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
George Bernard Shaw
Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car.
George Bernard Shaw
HAMM:Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?NAGG:I didn't know.HAMM:What? What didn't you know?NAGG:That it'd be you.(Pause.)
Samuel Beckett
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke
This isn't the first time I've used this, and the test subject showed no signs of impaired cognitive ability.""Who was the test subject?" asked Aurora."I test everything out on myself before taking it into the field."She stared at him. "You zapped your own brain?""And it didn't do me any harm apart from the dizziness and the vomiting spells and the weirdly persistent ringing in my ears. Also the blackouts and the mood swings and the creeping paranoia. Apart from that, zero side effects, if you don't count the numb fingertips. Which I don't.
Derek Landy
Put a thief among honest men and they will eventually relieve him of his watch.
Flann O'Brien
Besides, the story is ambivalent and mysterious in its ending. Is this Alkestis returning from down below? Why does she have a veil over her face? Could it be that when we forcefully bring back to life what has been lost through love what we get is only a shate of its former reality? Maybe we can never succeed fully in restoring the soul to life. Maybe she will always be veiled and at least partially shielded from the rigors of actual life. Love demands a submission that is total.
Thomas Moore
Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.
Moïra Fowley-Doyle
I do what the voices in my underwear tell me to do."Wait, what?"You mean the voices in your head?"Alec smirked. "Yeah, the voices in my head."I furrowed my eyebrows together and stared at him.Why was he smirking at me?He was confusing me.Wait.Voices in his underwear.In his head.The head in his underwear.I gasped. "You dirty bastard!
L.A. Casey
The man was more highly strung than Margaret Thatcher on the rag, God rest her.
L.H. Cosway
For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.
John Connolly
The Engineer smiled (internally, for of course it had no mouth). It was feeling good. It was feeling optimistic. Moving at its current speed, it would arrive back in Ireland in plenty of time to shut everything down before a series of overloads and power loops inevitably led to a sequence of events which would, in turn, eventually lead to the probable destruction of the world. The Engineer wasn't worried.And then the truck hit it.
Derek Landy
There is no such thing as romance in our day women have become too brilliant nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
Oscar Wilde
Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.''You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.''Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?''Before either.''I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad.'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?''I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.''Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.''I should like that awfully.'The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly.
Oscar Wilde
I want to burn the world because Alan is gone," he said. "I want to destroy everything I see. But you mean something to me. I will not destroy the world, because it has you in it.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Memory cannot produce a picture that Imagination has not retouched; and her pictures, even the ones least touched by Imagination, are no mere photographs, but the world of an artist.
Henry de Vere Stacpoole
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett
Hark,” he said, his tone very dry. “What stone through yonder window breaks?”Kami yelled up at him, “It is the east, and Juliet is a jerk!
Sarah Rees Brennan
We can do this the easy way,' Oblivious snarled. 'Or the hard way.''What's the easy way?''You leave immediately.''And what's the hard way?''We make you leave.'Skulduggery's head tilted. 'What was the easy way again?
Derek Landy
Whatever it may bring, I will live by my own policies, I will sleep with a clear conscience, I will sleep in peace.
Sinead O'Connor
I dream dark dreams. I dream of a figure moving through the forest, of children flying from his path, of young women crying at his coming. I dream of snow and ice, of bare branches and moon-cast shadows. I dream of dancers floating in the air, stepping lightly even in death, and my own pain is but a faint echo of their suffering as I run. My blood is black on the snow, and the edges of the world are silvered with moonlight. I run into the darkness, and he is waiting. I dream in black and white, and I dream of him. I dream of Caleb, who does not exist, and I am afraid.
John Connolly
I don’t think the world should assume that we are all natural mothers. And it does. I don’t think it’s such a big thing anymore, but the idea that you sacrifice everything for your children—it’s a load of rubbish. It leads to very destructive living and thinking, and it has a much worse effect on children than if you go out and live your own life. You’re meant to adore your children at all times, and you’re not meant to have a bad thought about them. That’s facism, you know, and it’s elevating the child at the expense of the mother. It’s like your life is not valid except in fulfilling this child’s needs. What about all your needs, your desires, your wants, your problems? They’re going to come out anyway, so it’s better they’re acknowledged straight off. Having said that, I really do believe that children have to be protected. They have to be loved. Somewhere between the two, I think, something needs to be sorted out. The relationship between parent and child is so difficult and so complex. There’s every emotion there. We mostly only acknowledge the good ones. If we were allowed to talk about the other ones, maybe it would alleviate them in some way
Marina Carr
The things that people were the most grateful for were the ordinary things in life. The sound of your spouse’s laugh, the smell of morning coffee, the echo of children playing in the yard. The little things. In waiting for the big moments—the vacations, the retirements, the birthdays—we risk missing the experiences of life most worthy of celebrating.
John O'Leary
Life makes fools of all of us sooner or later. But keep your sense of humor and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, its our own expectations that crush us.
Paul Murray
Ever hear of the phrase, Banging you're head on a brick wall?"Ah, but you forget, Darren, vampires can break brick walls with their heads.
Darren Shan
A lily-girl, not made for this world’s pain.
Oscar Wilde
He looked at Ghastly. "Thoughts?""I want to kill Sanguine," was the first thing Ghastly said. "And I want to do it slowly, in front of a lot of people. Using a hammer."Skulduggery nodded. "Very healthy.
Derek Landy
I owe all my originality, such as it is, to my determination not to be a literary man. Instead of belonging to a literary club I belong to a municipal council. Instead of drinking and discussing authors and reviews, I sit on committees with capable practical greengrocers and bootmakers... Keep away from books and from men who get their ideas from books, and your own books will always be fresh.
George Bernard Shaw
I wished to no longer hear the grayed bones crunching underneath the brush or feel the now inexorable fear that seemed to work its way inside my rib cage, rocking me at my core.
Anna Carey
If you do it in the bookies, it's a bet. . . . If you pay some 23-year-old in an Armani suit two hundred grand to go to the window for you, it's a derivative.
Paul Murray
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats
There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul
Sebastian Barry
Laws grind the poor and rich men rule the law.
Oliver Goldsmith
It's like rock n' roll for your eyes.
Paul Howard
I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant - impossible socially, but full-scale - and that it's the knockings and baterrings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banaility.
Elizabeth Bowen
There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.
Oscar Wilde
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us.
Oscar Wilde
A glass is good and a lass is good. And a pipe to smoke in cold weather The world is good and the people are good And we're all good fellows together.
John O'Keeffe