Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything.
And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant.
drill one hole after another into [language] until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through – I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.
[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so.
You can't have everything, I've often noticed it.
Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.
...that double-headed monster of damnation and salvation—Time.
Spend the years of learning squandering Courage for the years of wandering Through a world politely turning From the loutishness of learning.
Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.
James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.
We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.
Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.
Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.
You're on earth. There's no cure for that.
The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
