Quotations

FAULKNER, William 


“only when the clock stops does time come to life”
The Sound and the Fury

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”
The Sound and the Fury


JORDAN, Neil


"I had made a decision, although I hardly knew it yet. It's often that way with decisions, they're made in some hidden part of us and the awareness secretes itself slowly into that conscious part of us that imagines it decides".
Mistaken


"I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter."
Mistaken

"I walked with them, as crowds have that effect on me, I want to do what they do, to journey towards some point of revelation, which of course never comes."
Mistaken

"It's that the point? The pattern finds a way of replicating without the knowledge of the participants. Like a curse. Stoker knew that."
Mistaken


JAMES JOYCE

"It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant"

Ulysses

"Though is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, condescent: form of forms"

Ulysses

"Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see. See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end."

Ulysses

SEBASTIAN BARRY

"There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul"

On Canaan's Side

"And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of"
On Canaan's Side

"I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everyhting, if you follow the thread long enough"

On Canaan's Side

"Dredging up the past. Yet I confess there is a certain pleasure in this (...) I seem to see everyone and everything I was"

On Canaan's Side

"(...) everything can be unknotted by a simple gesture. That the darkness of a room can be solved by a single candle"

On Canaan's Side

"It constituted a moment of clear thought, such as you might get only three or four times in a life. When the sea-fog clears from the sea and the blue expanse is revealed like an explanation"

On Canaan's Side

"I was going to have to make myself again, anew, I saw. I was going to have to restore myself to some semblance of order, if I was ever to venture from that room again"

On Canaan's Side

"Our smiles mostly for each other, and every stranger a possible demon or bear, till they proved otherwise"

On Canaan's Side

"To remember sometimes is a great sorrow, but when the remembering has been done, there comes afterwards a very curious peacefulness. Because you have planted your flag on the summit of the sorrow. You have climbed it."

On Canaan's Side


CARROLL, Lewis

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

`--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.

`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

'Why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going a journey, I should say "With what porpoise?"

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

"So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality"
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland