There is nothing worse than the ambitions of a talentless person.

- Joseph O'Connor

Dublin was turning into Disneyland with super-pubs, a Purgatory open till five in the morning.

- Joseph O'Connor

Beliefs: Those things we hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

- Joseph O'Connor

The most important thing I would learn in school was that almost everything I would learn in school would be utterly useless. When I was fifteen I kn…

- Joseph O'Connor

Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.

- Joseph O'Connor

Everything is in the way the material is composed.

- Joseph O'Connor

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.

- Joseph O'Connor

It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.

- Joseph O'Connor

Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.

- Joseph O'Connor