Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 68

Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before me now, in fact... O, give it up old chap! Sleep it off!
James Joyce
I began keeping diaries after they locked Rosemary up at Butler and I went to live with Aunt Elaine in Cranston until I was eighteen, but even the diaries can't be trusted. For instance, there's a series of entries describing a trip to New Brunswick that I'm pretty sure I never took. It used to scare me, those recollections of things that never took place, but I've gotten used to it.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Don't you know that love isn't just going to bed? Love isn't an act, it's a whole life. It's staying with her now because she needs you; it's knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures -- when all that's on the shelf and done with. Love -- why, I'll tell you what love is: it's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.
Brian Moore
A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
George Bernard Shaw
A man cannot dress without his ideas get clothed at the same time.
Laurence Sterne
To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius.
Joyce Cary
There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.
Frank McCourt
We lie to protect our children, and in lying we expose them to the greatest of harms
John Connolly
Estragon: And if he doesn't come?Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We'll see when the time comes.
Samuel Beckett
With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they'd be cooking chips at this hour was anyone's guess.
Adrian McKinty
This singularity of meaning--I was my face, I was ugliness--though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life. Everything led to it, everything receded from it--my face as personal vanishing point.
Lucy Grealy
America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
Oscar Wilde
Will I begin it? said Doyler laughing. That's all that's in it, he laughing said.Oh sure that grin. Oh sure that wonderful saucerful grin. Jim sat on the grass and he plucked at the blades. He knew for certain sure that Doyler would be turning from him again. He said, You'll be walking away from me soon, won't you now? There was no answer. Jim plucked the grass and stared beyond where the waves broke on the island shore. He said, I wish you wouldn't Doyler. It does break my heart when you walk away.Old pal o' me heart, said Doyler.But already he had turned, and he was walking away. Walking that slow dreadful slope with never a leaf or a stone. Walking; and though Jim tried to keep pace, e could not, and sometimes he called out, Doyler! Doyler! but he never heard or he did not heed, only farther and farther he walked away. And when Jim woke from these dreams, if he did not remember, he knew he had dreamt, for the feeling inside him of not feeling at all. And it was hard then to make his day.
Jamie O'Neill
Fate goes ever as fate must.
Seamus Heaney
I thought he'd pick me, I know he has kids, but when it came down to it, I really thought he'd pick me."Tears rolled down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed."I know I'm selfish""You're human""I wanted him to abandon his children
Anna McPartlin
I recalled with some discomfort that the man driving the vehicle had invented the sport of volcano boarding, presumably as a way of solving, in one deft move, the problems of the insufficient riskiness of both snowboarding and hanging out on the slopes of active volcanoes. Although I was not sure that I wanted to live forever, I was sure that I didn’t want to go down in a blaze of chintzy irony, plunging into a ravine strapped into the passenger seat of a thing called the Immortality Bus.
Mark O'Connell
Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever…
Roddy Doyle
What's this about slippers?" Stephanie's mom said, walking in."Dad's just saying he could never lead the resistance against a robot army because he wears slippers.""This is very true," her mum said."Then it's decided," Stephanie's father said. "When the robot army makes itself known, I will be one of the first traitors to sell out the human race.""Wow," said Stephanie."Now that's an about-turn," said her mum."It's the only way," said her dad. "I have to make sure my family survives. The two of you and that other one, the small one--""Alice.""That's her. You're all that matter to me. You're all I care about. I will betray the human race so that the robot army spares you. And then later, I will betray you so that the robot army spares me. It's a dangerous ploy, but someone has to be willing to take the big risks, and I'll be damned if I'm about to let anyone else gamble with my family's future.""You're so brave," Stephanie's mum said."I know," said her dad, and then quieter, "I know.
Derek Landy
Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that
Oscar Wilde
You can't teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don't you?
Frank McCourt
Just because an apple falls one hundred times out of a hundred does not mean it will fall on the hundred and first.
Derek Landy
Be secret and exult Because of all things known That is most difficult.
William Butler Yeats
[L]uxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience. (Ancillary Justice)
Caitlín R. Kiernan
You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died. Such souls belong here, because they would find no peace elsewhere. In this place, they are understood. In this place, their faults have meaning. In this place, they belong.
John Connolly
MISS PRISMMemory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar Wilde
Sometimes religion gets in the way of God.
Bono
I know that no matter how lonely I get, I'll never be truly alone again. Our loved ones don't leave us. They just move out of sight for a while, and wait...in the shades.
Darren Shan
The nice thing about twitter is the architecture of visibility. Email is invisible unless you reach out to someone directly. With Twitter, anyone can follow you and this is one of the big changes that was really introduced by Flickr, was this wonderful idea that you can follow somebody without their permission. Recognizing that relationships are asymmetrical, unlike facebook where we have to acknowledge each other otherwise we can’t see each other.
Tim O'Reilly
The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
Oscar Wilde
Seeing his daughter slowly die, coupled with his infinite sadness and misery, the clockmaker becomes a recluse to the tower of the castle and begins to build something behind closed doors, not even his daughter knows what he’s up to. For five years, she only sees him briefly at meal-times before locking himself up in the tower once again...""...Did he have a bathroom in the tower?""Yes, Jack. A big one! En-suite! Power-shower and spa! Where was I!?
Jonathan Dunne
Her fear was infectious, and though I was too young to truly know terror, I felt it in my heart and trembled.
Darren Shan
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth
Oscar Wilde
There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?
James Joyce
Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.
Bono
Blood in the water I sing, and one who shed it: deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it- weaving the ancient-most tale of the Sea's sending: singing the tragedy, singing the joy unending This is our shame- this is the whole Ocean's glory: this is the Song of the Twelve. Hark to the story! Hearken, and bring it to pass: swift lest the sorrow long ago laid to it's rest devour us tomarrow!
Diane Duane
Home was not the place where you were born but the place you created yourself, where you did not need to explain, where you finally became what you were.
Dermot Bolger
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion enmity worship love but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde
It's a myth that crazy people don't know they're crazy. Many of us are surely as capable of epiphany and introspection as anyone else, maybe more so. I suspect we spend far more time thinking about our thoughts than do sane people.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
The sudden, painful flare of envy caught me by surprise. I was a loner, my last few years in school. I could have done with a friend like that.
Tana French
Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love;Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough.Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and howIn the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.
James Joyce
The aim of life is self-development
Oscar Wilde
I wish I'd been born with your capacity for wonder. I wouldn't mind living a shorter life if my short life could be as vivid as yours.
Sara Baume
When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
Oscar Wilde
And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
James Joyce
In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
Robert Lynd
No one likes sarcasm, Miss Cain. I’ve merely delayed my exit to promise you something. You took my straight razor, li’l darlin’. That I view as an unforgivable offense. So when the time comes, when you have served your purpose, I swear to you I’m gonna kill you for free.” And with that, Billy-Ray Sanguine disappeared into the ground. Then he popped his head back up. “Or at least half price.” And he was gone again.
Derek Landy
Ravel said. “And I order people around really well. This morning, Tipstaff came over with a cup of tea and I told him no, I don’t want tea I want coffee. That was great. I really asserted my authority.”“Did he go and get you a coffee?”“No, he said he’d already made a pot of tea so I took the tea because, you know he’d already made it, but my authority was still firmly asserted.”Ghastly nodded. “He’ll think twice about making tea again.”“That he will, Ghastly my friend, that he will. What are we looking for, by the way?“Seriously? I gave you the file half an hour ago.”“Yes, you did.”“And did you read it?”“No, I did not.
Derek Landy
Success is manufactured in the Mind, while Happiness is cultivated in the Soul
Philip McKernan
Every creative act, however small, enriches our species and the world around us. To find and nurture talent, is to be truly wealthy.
Stewart Stafford
It is time to end a story that began in sorrow and ordeal and has ended in a deep and lasting happiness. May it be so for others.
Anne McCaffrey
I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job
Seamus Heaney
Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.
Colum McCann
Talking about one's feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a root in something else.
Derek Landy
Society is indeed a contract ... it becomes a participant not only between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Edmund Burke
One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.
Colum McCann
And maybe, although it was a thing you could hardly bear to think about, like death or your last judgment, maybe he would be the last one ever and he would walk away now and it would only be a question of waiting for it all to end and hoping for better things in the next world. But that was silly, it was never too late.
Brian Moore
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
George Bernard Shaw
Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?
W.B. Yeats
The child's existence turned a plain world to riches. Her life raised up like this, the child giving point and purpose to each day, the care of him transforming her, widening and deepening her.
Mary Costello