“The first thing to say about Finnegans Wake is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable.”

“Some families, Katie told us, are devil-haunted; it's a curse a family can never shake off. Maybe it's something terrible in the family history, some terrible deed that was done in the past, and it just spreads and it spreads down the generations like a shout down a tunnel that echoes and echoes and never really stops.”

“I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job”

“History says, Don’t hopeOn this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up,And hope and history rhyme”

“To work, her dumb lunge says,is to move a certain mass...through a certain distance,is to pull your weight and feelexact and equal to it.Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.”

“Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.”

“It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.”