“Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight...”

“My friends I tell you this, we are a jolly group but put us in uniform and all that change. In war I dont know who my brother. In war I dont know who my friend. War make everybody savage. Who can s...”

“Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.”

“If the Holy Communion touched my teeth, I thought that was a mortal sin”

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”

“Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think they should be raw. They should be written as perfectly as possible, but what...”

“A statue stands in a shaded placeAn angel girl with an upturned faceA name is written on a polished rockA broken heart that the world forgot”

“If you are really doing all this for your kids, then why are you so mean to them?”

“A terrible sadness threatened to overwhelm me as I wondered how two people capable of such love for each other had eventually felt so little for the child they had produced between them.”

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butcher...”

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.”