Thinking you're a genius is death.

This is why you can never reason true Christians out of the faith. It’s not, as the adage has it, because they were never reasoned into it – many were – it’s that faith is a logical door which locks behind you. What looks like a line of thought is steadily warping...

I retain a stupid, Romantic love for pens and pads. The stuff of writing still affects me. And I’ve always been someone who will go to the bathroom in the middle of dinner to write down something, a word or idea, that for whatever reason had not wanted to be lost. You have to be a squirrel in that way. You have to be a chipmunk, and what you are collecting are combinations of words.

Every unhappy family is periodically ransacked by joy.

A good writer wants from us – or has no right to ask more than – intelligence, good faith and time.

What harm is done by that commonplace word? What distinctions will not, cannot be drawn where enemy holds sway? Is the concept “enemy” the enemy of clear thought, therefore of justice? What is gained by its invocation? Perhaps as important, what is lost?

He asked me to pour him some whiskey and announced flatly his intention to nap.

The city of Cork – the urban center, where all the shops and bars and everything are – is actually an island, a river island.

They are trying to live, but they have no room to breathe. So they try harder and breathe less.

Life before birth is a dream, life after death is another dream. What comes between is only a mirage of the dreams.