“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their...”

“You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afr...”

“Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”

“He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place.”

“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails”

“God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“For you can't hear Irish tunes without knowing you're Irish, and wanting to pound that fact into the floor.”

“Lunch looks grand, Meg. Youve really outdone yourself, James commented, loading his plate. He frowned down at an escaping carrot extending precariously over the plate edge andeased it back with his...”

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”