“You're a terrible man for the blankets, said Kerrigan.I'm not ashamed to admit that I love my bed, said Byrne. She was my first friend...She will house me in my last hour and faithfully hold my cold body when I am dead. She will look bereaved when I am gone.”

“After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?"I felt pleased again. He was now questioning me."What?""That No is a better word than Yes," he replied.”

“I would not hurt you, little man,' he said.'I think that I got the disorder in Mullingar,' I explained. I knew that I had gained his confidence and that the danger of violence was now passed. He then did something which took me by surprise. He pulled up his own ragged trouser and showed me his own left leg. It was smooth, shapely and fairly fat but it was made of wood also.'That is a funny coincidence,' I said. I now perceived the reason for his sudden change of attitude.'You are a sweet man,' he responded, 'and I would not lay a finger on your personality. I am the captain of all the one-legged men in the country. I knew them all up to now except one—your own self—and that one is now also my friend into the same bargain. If any man looks at you sideways, I will rip his belly.''That is very friendly talk,' I said.'Wide open,' he said, making a wide movement with his hands. 'If you are ever troubled, send for me and I will save you from the woman.''Women I have no interest in at all,' I said smiling. 'A fiddle is a better thing for diversion.''It does not matter. If your perplexity is an army or a dog, I will come with all the one-leggèd men and rip the bellies. My real name is Martin Finnucane.''It is a reasonable name,' I assented.'Martin Finnucane,' he repeated, listening to his own voice as if he were listening to the sweetest music in the world.”

“Are your friends as good as MY friends? I can discern the nod of of assent but doubt it. My own friends are far better, they are famous people and they are all dead.Who, you may ask, are those friends of mine, and why are they dead?It is a fair question. They are dead because, had they lived, they would have died anyway from extreme old age and decrepitude.”

“Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me.”

“I had never met these solicitors and never met Divney but they were really all working for me and my father had paid in cash for these arrangements before he died. When I was younger I thought he was a generous man to do that for a boy he did not know well.”

“You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?""That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant.I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.”