Quotes by Sebastian Barry

“Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the contents jumbled about, maybe not only from neglect but also from too much haphazard search...”

“And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things tha...”

“I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved to...”

“I wonder if I were to have an X-ray at the little hospital, would the machine see my grief? Is it like rust, arheum about the heart?”

“The real comfort is that the history of the world contains so much grief that my small griefs are edged out, and are only cinders at the borders of the fire. I am saying this again because I want i...”

“The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising.”

“with ringworm, lice bites, and a million bugs. Men so sick they are dying”

“There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures.”

“It was an earthquake, tearing at the sons of America, trying to swallow them up. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sons, that women had reared, had kissed and screamed at, and that fathers had stared...”

“Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too.”

“His people had hogs there till the bottom fell out of hogs. The bottom was always falling out of something in America far as I could see. So it was with the world, restless, kind of brutal. Always ...”

“The bottom was always falling out of something in America far as I could see.”

“If it had been a great necessity, if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strate...”

“For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.”

“Men so sick they are dying of death.”

“I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everything, if you follow the thread long enough”

“Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.”

“In the darkness as we lie side by side John Cole's left hand snakes over under the sheets and takes a hold of my right hand. We listen to the cries of the night revellers outside and hear the horse...”

“I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can't be controlled....”

“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”