I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose l….

A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point..

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind..

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me..

It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else..

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues..

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed..

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the f….

The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note,….

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are..

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was o….

Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women..

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing..

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere..

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness..

The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel..

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening..

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10..

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living..

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit..

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life..