Novelists From Ireland

"Clementine climbing lonely to the rampart of the gate tower. To stand under a clear sky slowly opening from the west. Big bright stars on this moonless night. Air clean and moist. Stare up at the blazing sparkling heavens and all worldly wrong doing vanishes. Till you look down again."

"Perhaps the last moment is not the saddest. Mine was when they wouldn't let me be an altar boy. Chose the chap who said he wanted to be close to God. I said I wanted to carry a big candle so I could look great and my aunt could see me. Waltzing on the altar of a sunday."

"Mountains rising up purple in the evening sky. Clouds pressing darkly from the sea. Horses' hooves clattering on the stony rutted road. Brown bog lands. Heather and gorse. Tiny spots of yellow flowers. Spring lies somewhere. Hiding butterflies who will skip over the countryside. Rain streaks the carriage glass. Breezes blow up through the floor. [...] Rocking swaying and bouncing, horses churning hooves as the carriage mounts these hills. Galloping around turns, crashing over ruts. By barren bog lands. Sheep running from the path of the rumbling vehicle."

"Strength comes from struggle."

"And you my boy are going to make something of yourself. Take no nonsense from inferiors and less from superiors and count on being surrounded by crass stupidity for most of your life."

"All I know is if there's no heaven there's sure enough been plenty of hell. They preach to you that God is good and generous. I think he must be a scoundrel. [...] Not a soul here you can trust. From the moment they lay eyes on you their little brains are scheming how to get the better of you. A back turned is a back stabbed."

"Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros. Every madman thinks everyone else mad."

""Percival, you seem to have confidence in the future." "Ah now without the present you wouldn't have a future. And sure the present is busy making the past while the future is waiting. And there's no harm keeping the future waiting while it's not here yet. And when you get there what is it but you're in the present all over again." Staring out the tiny window of the turret. Things not so bad. When you think. There's no harm keeping the future waiting."

"[A novel] has a right and a duty to ask very painful and difficult questions. It doesn't solve them, but it asks them. (1995)"

"Charnel Castle's ivied turrets massively silhouetted against the sky. Smoke pouring from four chimney pots. Two great black birds throb wings up into the blue from a battlement, turn, wheel and dive with gleaming wings and zoom up again in the mild air. Bleat of sheep. Call of a lamb. From which Percival if he's a good shot may get a chop. Or a trout may flip out for the breakfast table from a stream flowing by the castle wall."

"I don't think I have ever learned the game of men and women. To this day I regret the fact that it's like a dance I couldn't learn."

"Eat this great bowl of emptiness."

"Reach up to put a hand to some dream you kept awake. Now you take it like a red ripe apple and polish quietly up and down one's sleeve."

"Life is always travelling to a sorrow."

"Along the Liffey quays this night, puddles of water on the cobble stoned street. Lonely lamplights. Coal dust and barrels, crates and bundles of wire. Great shadows of the gas tank rearing in the sky. A whiff and sniff and smell of pine timber. Wild shadows against a sky faintly purple. Clouds rolling with moonlit edges. The blast of a ship's whistle. A hawser splashing in the water. Up in the crystal night the ship's red light. Trembling engines as the great black silhouette moves out on the flowing river."

"Balthazar B standing on this grey wet pavement. The rain falling through a halo of lamplight. A post office, butcher, grocer and newsagent. Lonely houses behind high hedges. The wind with a seaweed smell off the sea. This girl thinly standing, clutching her handbag. The rear red light of the taxi still seen after its sound is gone."

"Good larder is a man's salvation."

"And there. Caught in the morning sun. She goes. Galloping. Her hair flying from her head as Dingle's flows out from his mane. A gleaming black body rippling of muscle. Great long legs stretching out on the emerald turf."

"Morning wiping sleepy dust from eyes, Balthazar asked nannie why does everyone cry. Because your father has gone away. Where. To where people go. Where do they go. They pass away. Where. To be with God. Why. Because they are dead. What is dead. Dead is when your heart grows cold. Will my heart ever grow cold. Yes God love you little boy."

"If you shoot off a chap's kneecaps I hardly think there is point in putting bullets in his liver."

"You look so splendid." "Just my image. The inner Tomson is in a sand storm, the outer one is skiing down the sunny mountain, smiling." "Shall we bring the inner Tomson somewhere for a cocktail?" "Let's."

"Smell weakness and they close in all at once."

"A pity to meet kindness. Lower one's guard. And wham."

"I swim back to the shores of privilege out of the sea of the dispossessed."

"Foxy said the whole country was night and day asking God for favours. And you'd never get a chance to slip your own in. Especially if they had any old uncles or aunts to die to leave them a bit of land, they'd say dear Jesus would you ever strike the fuckers dead."

"In a big bowl full of hatred can you ever find a spoonful of love."

"Ambling south along the river past the Watch Museum, where so often one means to visit but never finds the time."

"Tongues never still. Wagging and wagging. In one shopkeeper's ear and out to a dozen others. And in a thrice don't they have the whole story all over Ireland."

"A tall scholar rushes up the steps to the lectern and Latins out grace. Beseated. A great clatter of shifting chairs. The carvers stand at their long tables sharpening knives. The great joints heaved up on their platters at the serving hatch. Thin harassed faces of these little women stared out across the dark gowned gathering. To catch their breath and go plunging back down again deep into the bowels of this dungeon kitchen. The clank of cutlery. The passing of the jug of beer. Light refreshing ale, a gift from a prosperous brewer."

"I think I am at a cross roads. And which way I turn may indeed be the direction of my whole destiny." "Ah you are far too young to speak so. Life it comes. Bang. It knocks you a little this way. Bang. It knock you a little bit the other way. And the direction you go. Well you are lucky if it is not backwards." "Or bang, it could madam, flatten one altogether." "Yes, it does do that too. But then we must get up again."

"If you don't live with kids they grow to hate you. If you live with them they hate you more. Not a shred of respect. [...] Take my money, and then look me in the eye and say who asked you to be our father."

"I, George Smith, hereby make known my last will and testicle. First off I should like to rear up and haunt all those who tried to screw me up while living. Special attention to be given those fuck pigs who have communicated with me by letter attempting thereby to get funds from my unrelenting clutches."

""Why don't you shut up. You thief." Amazing how few words one has to use to gain one's desired effect."

"Love and affection calms the horse. Provided you can administer these before you are bitten, trampled or kicked to death. Meanwhile step back out of harm's way. Murmur quiet peaceful words. There, there now. Easy there. Quietly now. Good old fellow."

"It would seem in life when all is said and done that it is unwise to speak to anyone if it can be avoided."

"Now kneel down in that booth while I give ye me special yule blessing. Get down in that booth. I know you're standing, you dirty ould cheat. Get down. For Jesus, what are you doing, ripping the phone out? Repeat after me, the Lord is my shepherd as I am one of his sheared sheep." "The Lord is my shepherd as I am one of his sheared sheep."

"Interesting that in times of terror, when the boom is to be lowered, people you hire to save you trouble and trembling think instantly of their own skins. As things come out of the void to get you. Bullets, buses, trucks, germs."

"To a blonde tweedy lady I had to administer a few I beg your pardons before she would await her turn. When a red nosed tinkerish looking Jarvey with a rather scrawny mare pulled up. In my most gentlemanly fashion I ushered these three older country people just behind to proceed ahead of me. But they nodded in eight directions and looked up at the sky in four more as if asking every saint in heaven for assistance and then urged me with their country voices to take the horsecab. "Ah, it's soon enough later for the likes of us.""

"Life getting like a merrygoround with people getting on and off and no one paying for the ride."

"And I've something to tell you in strict confidence so spread it everywhere."

"What the hell have I got to show for all the time I've been over here? Nothing. And it's because of people like you. The Irish are all the same wherever they go. Faces compressed into masks of suffering. Complaining and excuses. And the Irish rasping, squabbling and bickering. Hear me? I'm sick of it. I hate it. I thought you got places where you learned to be an electrician. Good steady job. Good money. Have kids. I don't want kids. I don't want to be sucked down. And listen to some priested mick saying this is the second Sunday after Pentecost, there will be a communion breakfast next Sunday, and I want to see you all put a dollar in the basket. And every time I get a chance to get out of it, something screws me."

"Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more."

"I'm suspicious about people interested in saving other people's souls."

"Mr Dangerfield, why don't you believe in hell and things like that?" "Hell is for poor people."

"He is young but he thinks old."

"Never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty."

"Turn to gangsterism." "Sebastian, I couldn't." "Tone, pride has you at its mercy." "Has me by the very ballocks." "Tony, I think a pint would see us right." "I think you're right for the first time since you last said that."

"What are you going to do in London?" "Rest from the eyes. Ever notice the eyes along the street. Ever notice them? Looking for something. And in this fine cultured city it's me."

"All I want Is one break Which is not My neck."

"How small we make our worlds. Gather them in, tighten them up into little castles of fear."