Peter Murphy

“My mother always said that I would come to a bad end but I never thought she meant this - writing allegory in literal times.”

“Is "to-read" the new "I'll-call-you?”

“They were still in that forgiving time when even their flaws were quaint.”

“Some good things did come out of France, but the place has become unbearably Gaulish don’t you think?”

“We have had a spot of bother. I am afraid that I shot the Bard in the bottom. Good thing that I was over fifty paces away.”

“I think you should be grateful to the English, they built this country and made it civil.”

“It was great spending the nights with him, but sometimes, she needed a little break from him and the her that she became around him.”

“His voice evoked the ghosts of those who had paid that price and died horribly. They hovered in the shadows muttering vengeance, but he didn't appear to be affected as he walked and talked. He was at home with the living and the dead.”

“She knew where they were going. She had visited Kilmainham Gaol before, wrapped in its brooding walls lest the ghosts it housed should break free and point accusing fingers at those who used the reins of power to drive the horses of personal ambition. It was a sad place where the residue of human suffering lingered – it had no place else to go.”

“Another brave new world beckoned, but Dublin was dubious – too often hope had been trampled down by foreign armies or strangled in dark alleys by the shadows of avarice and graft.”

“May God forgive you for saying such a thing.”

“Words that had looked so strong on the page, which ran through his mind like music, now shriveled in the air around him.”

“Are you sayin' it's okay to throw yourself at someone for the sake of art but it's not okay to go around bein' nice?”

“Gods become myths when people stop believin’ in them.”

“Yes. I guess it's the foolish romantic in me, but you see, I don’t think that sex is my Muse.”

“Do you really think that one person can be enough for someone?”

“Women didn't like to face reality, especially his.”

“Horse-Protestant be damned,” Maurice chuckled, “I am as Irish as the rest of you, but I don’t get to blame someone whenever things don’t go my way.”

“Shadows gathered as they had done for eons, beneath the moon and the twinkling of a million stars, like a gathering of forgotten deities.”