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

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

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..

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..

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for ar….

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..

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

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough..

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

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind..

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

It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?.

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..

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..

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,….

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

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

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

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….