"The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych.""

"I was the worst barman who ever lived. My pints of Guinness were unholy."

"I have a rule that I don't drink in New York because I don't want to wake up with a hangover and not be able to work."

"I wanted to be a poet as a child and I have a wall in my study dedicated to poetry books, all in alphabetical order, that reminds me daily of my failure."

"If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away."

"When I was a professor at the University of Austin in Texas, it had such a luxurious swimming–pool that one end had a raised ledge in the water specifically so you could drag a deckchair in and lie on it and read. But the problem is that the students are all so young and the thing with Americans is that when they're fit, they are so fit. So you feel like someone's granny pottering about in the slow lane."

"I was brought up in a house where there was a great deal of silence."

"A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country."

"She had time for everybody. Perhaps because her stories came from all of us and for all of us."

"She rearranged a whole wall of books so it was completely full of Irish writers. She didn't look like she was any trouble so no one caught her."

"She had that great gift of making you feel life was worth living. A very, very special person."

"On my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain."

"Suddenly they asked me, as only the French would, ‘Madame, what is your philosophy of life?’ What a cosmic question, but I had to answer, and answer quickly, because it was live. So I said, in French, ‘I think that you’ve got to play the hand that you’re dealt and stop wishing for another hand.’"

"I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn't get into the mind of the person who was plotting vengeance."

"She was charming, intelligent, warm, generous in her time, with her effort, with her work. I just had the greatest of respect for her because she suffered badly from arthritis, and she had a lot of pain, and she never complained, you know."

"I often wonder that if I had met Hitler, I reckon I might have found some streak of decency in him."

"It's like if you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either."

"I don't say I was 'proceeding down a thoroughfare', I say I 'walked down the road'. I don't say I 'passed a hallowed institute of learning', I say I 'passed a school'. You don't wear all your jewellery at once. You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice."

"I write exactly as I speak, so therefore I would not say any writer influenced me at all."

"(A) writer, a man I loved and he loved me and we got married and it was great and is still great. He believed I could do anything, just as my parents had believed all those years ago, and I started to write fiction and that took off fine. And he loved Ireland, and the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers."

"'Tis well to be merry and wise, 'Tis well to be honest and true; 'Tis well to be off with the old love, Before you are on with the new."

"They waste life in what are called good resolutions—partial efforts at reformation, feebly commenced, heartlessly conducted, and hopelessly concluded."

"A malady Preys on my heart that med'cine cannot reach."

"O wretched is the dame, to whom the sound, "Your lord will soon return," no pleasure brings."

"In country places a single word is inflected to mean a hundred things, so that only a recording of the sounds gives an idea of the speech of these people."

"'I was talking to one of the McArdles there and I was telling him that he ought to be getting a women. "Huh," says he, "what would I be doing with a woman? I have me pint and me fag," says he, "and I'm not going to bring in a woman.'""

"With women in general he was truthful and sincere and would talk philosophy or Canon Law (Canon Law fascinated him, though what he knew of the subject was utter nonsense) to them on the slightest provocation. Women cannot understand honesty in a man."

"'Begod there's a powerful piece of turnips'"

"The headlands and the hedges were so fresh and wonderful, so gay with the dawn of the world. Tarry never tired looking at these ordinary things as he tired of the Mass and of religion. In a dim way he felt that he was not a Christian. In the god of Poetry he found a God more important to him than Christ. His god had never accepted Christ."

"They were both more than twenty-seven in those enthusiastic years of nineteen hundred and thirty-five, yet neither had as much as ever kissed a girl. Not that kissing was much in favour in that district. Reading about lovers kissing, Tarry often reflected on the fact that he had never seen anyone kissing anyone, except poor old Peter Toole whom he once saw kissing a corpse in a wakehouse in the hope of getting a couple of glasses of whiskey."

"'I always say to these here, marry the first man that asks you. There's only three classes of men a woman should never marry - a delicate man, a drunken man, and a lazy man. I'm not so sure that the lazy man isn't the worst.'"

"Outside the door a group of men stood whispering while the less solemn parts of the Mass were being said. These men stared about them at the rolling country of little hills and commented on the crops, the weather, the tombstones or whatever came into their dreaming minds. 'Very weedy piece of spuds, them of Mick Finnegan's.' 'He doesn't put on the dung, Larry: the man that doesn't drive on the dung won't take out a crop.' A pause, 'Nothing like the dung.'"

"Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco- Wherever I turn I see In the stony grey soil of Monaghan Dead loves that were born for me."

"I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away."

"I do not know what age I am, I am no mortal age; I know nothing of women, Nothing of cities, I cannot die Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges."

"I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance."

"O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water, preferably, so stilly Greeny at the heart of summer. Brother Commemorate me thus beautifully Where by a lock niagarously roars The falls for those who sit in the tremendous silence Of mid-July."

"At the foot of the cross, in all humility and in all adoration, we have learned at once the depth and the height of human nature; we have learned to think all wisdom but foolishness for the knowledge of Christ; all purity but sin, unwashed by His atonement; all hope in earth, of all hopes the most miserable, but in the faith of His most blessed resurrection; content to bear the struggles of life, at His command; and submitting to the grave, with a consciousness that it can sting no more."

"Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh; Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear; To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer."

"[Brendan Behan was] too young to die, but too drunk to live."

"If the English hoard words like misers, the Irish spend them like sailors; and Brendan Behan … sends language out on a swaggering spree, ribald, flushed, and spoiling for a fight."

"Mother, they would praise my balls if I hung them high enough."

"It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody."

"I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer."

"There's no bad publicity except an obituary."

"The sun was in mind to come out but having a look at the weather it was in lost heart and went back again."

"I only drink on two occasions — When I am thirsty and when I'm not."

"When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."

"He was born an Englishman and remained one for years."

"An author's first duty is to let down his country."