I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles.

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.

Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me.

Writing is like carrying a fetus.

never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty.

... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.

Promiscuity is the death of love.

I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

She had awoken this morning and slipped the amethyst ring off her finger. It had felt liked a blessed release, a final shadow lifted from her heart.

My parents were just carried out of the building in the service elevator, " he shouted at the cops. "They were vile, but they didn't deserve to be taken out with the trash!

Never take advise from any one. Only you know what is best for you. Never give advise to any one. You only know what is best for you

My mother comes in my room and says, "Just look at this mess! This is a pig sty!" Now, I've already been in the room five hours, and she wants me to LOOK at it.

People who publish poetry today do it from a sense that poetry needs to be published, not because they think they are going to make money.

Spend more time building your character than trying to build your platform.

Man is a machine and in the whole universe there is but a single substance, matter, variously modified.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

It's really such a personal journey, making a record, but even more so writing the songs.

I probably take a pretty traditional view about hell. I'm not very contemporary in terms of that.