“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...”

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyon...”

“Thats love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.”

“Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”

“For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty.Now I am pretty lonely.”

“I missed him so much that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place.”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”