“This tired abstract anger; inarticulate passive opposition; always the same thing in dublin”
“Rilke said: This is what Fate means: to be opposite, to be opposite to every thing and nothing else but opposite and always opposite.”
“Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.”
“For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”
“... perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead...”
“I am strong, but I am tired, Stephen, tired of always having to be the strong one, of always having to do the right thing.”