“There's no sense to being Irish unless you know the world's going to break your heart.”
“...to be Irish is to know the world will break your heart before you are thirty.”
“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”
“Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.”
“There's no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.”
“As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.”