J. P. Donleavy

""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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"On the granite steps of Macfugger House between the tall sweating pillars. The green ground dropping away. Down towards trees, great dark leafy mushrooms towering over the grass. A lonely sound of wind. The grey grey clouds cramped in the heavens. Listen for souls. When they sound. Bellowing out in the night. Thudding through ditches. Squeezing out the bitter drops of hate. To scar and sour the soil."

"Where do I keep my feelings. Of ferocious anger. While I make all my pleasant replies."

"Ahead two distant houses. Facing each other across the road. Pass between them in a crossfire of eyes."

"Having over the years abided by my little commandments. [...] Not to end up being the man folk show their children. To say don't grow up dilapidated like him."

"Bloodmourn said on the trip cross country that he frequently needed a change of human beings. To vary the flavour of the treacheries."

"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."

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

"Ah Master Reginald, you've learned your first lesson in life. Unless you were better off where you've been, you're always better off where you are. But no matter where you've been or where you are you'll never know if you'll be better off where you're going."

"But with all my responsibilities these days I thought that a wife would be quite suitable. And save me paying wages."

"Newsboys on the street corners shouting out Herald and Mail. Their tattered jackets too small and their white naked legs and blue white feet on the wet blocks of granite, phlegm streaming from their noses. The evening herd of cold pinched dark coated figures waiting to cross at the pavement's edge, their breath making steam from their mouths. The strange purple of the sky. A ship hooting on the river. Great stacks of barrels quayside being loaded by a ship's derrick under lights. And bouncing on the cobbles, clattering huge carts tugged by massive horses. Followed here and there by impatient automobiles. Must be sadness where so many of the lower orders live inside the big broken windows. Behind these mournful unloved walls."

"The one who leads the hunt gets no splatter."

"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."

"What's that. A massive shadow. Moving. Big white curly head. Two horns nicely curving down. On a Hereford bull. Dear God. Although I don't believe in you, here is an opportunity for you to prove to me you exist. If you will just not let that beast come after me, trapped as I am here on all fours on the edge of this bank. Darcy Dancer holding his breath. The bull slowly turning to sniff in the shadows. And the welcome sound. Of ripping grass again. The behemoth grazing. And another shadow seems like a heifer nudging beside him. Much better that he jumps on her than he wastes time chasing me."

"Ah, I'm getting on now. There are not many years left me. Sure what do they do with old butlers but shed them. Like a dog's winter hairs in summer. And send them with their tray into the grave. And they don't know the good servant's gone till they're sitting in all their splendour waiting in the drawing room. Wondering what's holding up the refreshment after dingling the bell down the kitchen hall. And if it's me they're calling I'd be coming only that I'm gone. And with luck be up there serving God instead."

"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."

"There is but one thing that is important, that no one can ever take your good manners from you."

"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."

"Darcy Dancer crossing the frosty cobbles of the farmyard. Snorts and stampings in the stables. The whinnies of Molly and Petunia. Who smell me near. Luke mucking out. Forking up the big brown lumps of dung matted with yellow straw and shovelling it into his barrow. At least someone is working. But I suppose I shall have to spout a few hackneyed words to pass the time of day. "Good morning to you sir. It's grand to see you up and about." "Thank you Luke. It's a chilly draughty old morning." "'Tis that sir." "Gives one a mind to thank god for inventing fire." "Ah now you've said it, sir. On these winter days you need the little bit of hell the Lord puts flaming in a grate.""

"But like the end of every rainbow I ran to with my sisters, all I ever found was misty rain drops."

"Foxy said it was always good to use the word fucking in your threats. Then they always fucking well knew. That you Fucking well Meant it"

"Even if everybody suffers, your own suffering does not seem less."

""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."

"Of the eighty thousand things that came all at once into my mind to say, I selected the one hundred and twelfth."

"My god, one can see such a different side of people when one's merely a menial. O God what utter amazing ruddy bliss to no longer be a menial."

"But damn it all, aren't we just as some great playwright or someone said, actors on a stage."

"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.""

"Bash on regardless. That is the cry dear chap. Through the funerals of friends. Trampling the rose gardens of enemies. Bash on regardless."