A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see…

- John Millington Synge

No man at all can be living forever and we must be satisfied.

- John Millington Synge

In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their is…

- John Millington Synge

The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind.

- John Millington Synge

When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house whe…

- John Millington Synge

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

- John Millington Synge

Words, particularly in a play, should have the texture of a crisp, autumn apple.

- John Millington Synge

Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

- John Millington Synge

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, for he will be going out on a day when he shouldn't.

- John Millington Synge