“The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned........THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer.”

“There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.”

“I get through some print.”

“Your life is in some bizarre state when priests are throwing abuse at you on the street.”

“The whiskey kicked like a mugger.”

“I will be a sonofabitch if he ain't in here at eleven-thirty at night, fartin' around in the dark with a pair of scissors and a paper sack.”

“His talent was to express his readers’ most stupid and ignorant prejudices as if they made sense, so that the shameful seemed respectable. That was why they bought the paper.”