Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 31

Perhaps it's true that all men love their fathers, no matter how terrible the things they do to their sons: there is a part of us that remains forever in debt to those responsible for our existence.
John Connolly
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Glenn Meade
Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron.
Eoin Colfer
Better overcautious than missing a jugular vein, as the saying goes."That was a very morbid saying. Maybe only vampire said it.
Sarah Rees Brennan
All vampires are brothers in the brotherhood of night!
Stewart Stafford
In tombs of gold and lapis lazuliBodies of holy men and women exudeMiraculous oil, odour of violet.But under heavy loads of trampled clayLie bodies of the vampires full of blood;Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet("Oil and Blood")
W.B. Yeats
But I also slaughtered you real mother and father. In a moment of mad rage, I took their lives and left you an orphan. If you choose to take my life as a payment for theirs, you will be within your rights and no vampire will hold it against you. Pass judgment on me, Gavner Purl, and let your hand rise or fall as destiny decides it must."-Larten Crepsley
Darren Shan
Doesn't sunlight kill them? Doesn't it turn them to dust, or make them burst into flames or something?""Nope. Vampires tan, just like you and me. Well, just like you. I tend to bleach.
Derek Landy
Valkyrie made a face. "Bloody vampires."Ryan sat forward. "That was a vampire? That guy who looked like an accountant?""We don't talk about vampires," Skulduggery warned."But it was daytime. How could he have been out during the-""We don't talk about vampires!" Valkyrie said sharply.Ryan shrunk back. "Sorry," he said."Don't worry about it," Skulduggery told him. "Valkyrie used to date a vampire that's
Derek Landy
Ever hear of the phrase, Banging you're head on a brick wall?"Ah, but you forget, Darren, vampires can break brick walls with their heads.
Darren Shan
But we have reason to think that the annihilation of work is no less a physical impossibility than its creation, that is, than perpetual motion.
George Gabriel Stokes
Reasons aren't really things that make you do other things. Reasons are things that you make up, much later, to reassure everyone that we are all logical and that the world makes sense. We do unreasonable things, because we want to, at the time. No reason. Much later we sit in the wreckage, building reasons out of little bits of wreckage, so we'll have something to show the crash investigators. Look, this is what caused it. So the whole mess at least appears reasonable. So we can convince ourselves that at least there was a reason for the disaster, something we can prevent or avoid, so it'll never happen again. But a lot of the time there's no reason. We just flew it to the ground. Because we felt like it. And we're still dangerous. And it could happen again anytime. Its easier to live with each other afterwards if we give each other reasons.
Julian Gough
Stephanie had no problem doing what shewas told, just so long as she was given a good reason why sheshould.
Derek Landy
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
No one remembers how you got a chance, they only remember what you did with it.
Stewart Stafford
Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.
Thomas F. Woodlock
I've fallen in love with you," he whispered to kiss the top of my hand.
Anna Carey
And you don't ever have to worry about what I feel. The way I feel about you won't change. You can do whatever you like to me. You could turn this town to dust, burn the woods until they were cinders, you could cut out my heart. It wouldn't matter. It would not change a thing.""What if I ate a baby?"Jared's mouth curved up at the corners, slow and not cruel at all. "I'm sure you'd have a good reason," he said.
Sarah Rees Brennan
Every time he touched her, the touch felt new, like something they had just invented together.
Sarah Rees Brennan
I did not matter what distant iron city had raised him. He had been made by Sorry-in-the-Vale, his bones as much a part of it as the valley and the woods. It was as if she had the whole town spread underneath her. Or the whole world, since right then he was the only part of it that mattered.
Sarah Rees Brennan
The friendship that like live is warm; a love like friendship, steady.
Thomas Moore
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
Oscar Wilde
When we’ve decided to tell the truth in a story, we should tell good, strong versions of it, proper versions that kids can do something with.
Celine Kiernan
I am girl of definitions, of logic, of black and white.Remember this.
Cecelia Ahern
People who make time for the sadness in your life, not just the joy, are worth keeping around.
Catherine Doyle
She pulled me into a hug and I squeezed her so tight we lost our breaths."I love you, Soph." She pulled back from me, her eyes wide and searching. "I'll see you really soon.""I know," I said, forcing my smile. "And I love you too."She tapped my nose and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper."We're the real love story here, you know that, don't you?"I wiped a tear from my cheek. "I know that, Mil. I've always known that.
Catherine Doyle
Alan: "I had terrible stage fright."Sin: "I'm not familiar with the concept of 'stage fright.'"A: "It's pretty awful. You end up having to picture the entire audience in their underwear. Phyllis was in that audience, you know."S: "Why, Alan, I had no idea your tastes ran that way."A: "Phyllis is a very nice lady. And I do not consider her so much aged as matured, like a fine wine. But I still think you owe me an archery lesson.
Sarah Rees Brennan
He came back full of life and hope and determination.
Bram Stoker
I won't die. I won't give those ghouls the pleasure. I'll live and grow strong. I'll escape, then hunt them down and make them suffer.
Darren Shan
I look at the cake in my mother's arms and think: here stands the only person in the whole world who'd go to such trouble for fractious, ungrateful me.
Sara Baume
Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.
Colum McCann
And now that they have us here, under their control, they've dropped whatever act they had on earth. We're seeing them as they really are.' He dipped his glove into the water and watched as the water turned golden. The air suddenly smelled of citrus. 'Look! It's orange juice!''Josh, focus!''You sound just like Mom or Isis or whatever her name is.
Michael Scott
A novelist's job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to structure something, when you need to be very intelligent indeed. The rest of the time, you need almost an empty mind, where you can let any image in, follow it along, and allow an emotional charge, almost the way actors and singers can work. The more instinct you have as a novelist, and the less intelligence, the better.
Colm Tóibín
A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.
Colum McCann
Talking about ideas for a novel is a bit like showing pictures of the ultrasound if you're pregnant. Until they're out in the world, they can only be wonderful to you.
Clare Boylan
Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.
Thomas Moore
Nowadays 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
Emma Donoghue
The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.
Samuel Beckett
I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.
Cecelia Ahern
The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising.
Sebastian Barry
And the view was suddenly clear to me. The world opened out to its grim beyonds and I realized that, at forty, one must learn the rigors of acceptance. Capitalize it: Acceptance. I needed to accept what was put before me--be it a watery grave in Ireland's only natural fjord, or a return to the city and its grayer intensities, or a wordless exile in some steaming Cambodian swamp hole, or poems or no poems, or children or not, lovers or not, illness or otherwise, success or its absence. I would accept all that was put in my way, from here on through until I breathed my last.
Kevin Barry
A splinter of pride got in under my breast-bone and lodged there.
Lia Mills
Let us thank God for valour in abstractionFor those who go their own way, will not kissThe arse of law and order nor compoundFor physical comfort at the price of pride
Louis MacNeice
Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.
Jonathan Swift
The devil...the prowde spirite...cannot endure to be mocked.
Thomas Moore
—Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literatures for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light."—For only with pride may a man prosper. With pride, all things follow. Without he have pride he is a shadowy skulk whose season is night.
Jamie O'Neill
He says every story has at least some truth in it, even if most are made up.
Darren Shan
The Irish way of telling a story is a complex and elaborate one, complete with wild exaggerations, a certain delight in improbable fantasy, and a heightened sense of drama.
Rashers Tierney
Story!" The dwarf snorted. "You'll be talking about "happily ever after" next. Do we look happy? There's no happily ever after for us. Miserabily ever after, more like.
John Connolly
A great story can change the world.
Stewart Stafford
They say a story loses something with each telling.
Cecelia Ahern
People tell stories and it's up to those who listen whether to believe or not.""Shouldn't the storyteller believe it.""The storyteller should tell it.
Cecelia Ahern
people often ignore the misfortune of others, you see. The world is a heartless place but it's not always because they don't care. It's sometimes because the are embarrassed, or because they don't know what to say, or because they simply cannot beat ro look into the eyes of someone who is suffering.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Guys get a bad rap for not wanting to talk about their feelings but maybe women are in part to blame for that. One thing that I learned from working with people where English was not their first language was this: just because they don’t speak your language doesn’t mean that they’re dumb. Maybe we just need to talk more slowly, use simpler words and have lots more patience.
Dermot Davis
Everything is in the way the material is composed.
Joseph O'Connor
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.
Oscar Wilde
you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity.
Oscar Wilde
I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
George Bernard Shaw
Difference is the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth, and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity.
John Hume