The Secret Scripture

The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising

After all, having been reared in England, albeit as an Irish child of some kind, I already have distance I believe from the strange chapters of this country's bewildering story.

The world is not full of betrayers, it is full of people with decent motives and a full desire to do right by those who know them and love them

It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.

As I came back out into the open air, I saw the mother far off in the distance, searching among the similar rocks at the other end of the strand. It was a sort of picture of utter futility and wrongness, motherhood doomed to failure

There is a moment in the history of every beaten child when his mind parts with hopes of dignity – pushes off hope like a boat without a rower, and lets it go as it will on the stream, and resigns himself to the tally stick of pain.