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Quotes by Irish Authors
"Get up in the morning on a mission to save prospective clients from the shabby, ill-fitting, overpriced and worthless alternatives that those charlatans - who are your competition - are trying to get away with flogging them."
"Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"
"As experimentation becomes more complex, the need for the co-operation in it of technical elements from outside becomes greater and the modern laboratory tends increasingly to resemble the factory and to employ in its service increasing numbers of purely routine workers."
"It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us."
"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything."
"It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets."
"After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world."
"Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order."
"But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art."
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
"ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go."
"There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point?"
"I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else."
"I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience - it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere."
"You must have realised by now that when one really cares, really tries to help, the other party recognises the fact and, therefore, easily sees the logic in working together for the greater good, for the mutual benefit of both."
"And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?"
"But he drank a lot. When love dies, he told me, there are no survivors."
"When people don't believe in you, you have to believe in yourself."
"Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever."
"Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection."
"The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords; learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance."
"No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly."
"That's it. I've said all I've got to say on the world of James Bond."
"The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror."
"I must turn myself around so that I am viewing life as my prospects see it. Only then can I start addressing their issues, help to prevent their pain, and advise on solutions to their problems."
"It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody."
"And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected."
"The present is the now the here through which all future plunges to the past."
"If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea."
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