Quotes from Niall Williams

Window panes that rattled under the lash of the wind for two months on end, rain that leaked beneath the doors, her husband out and drinking, electricity cut off and the radio shut down, the boredom, the quiet and incredible loneliness - Margaret Looney would remember when she first discovered love and wonder at how immense it must have been to be lasting so long.

As a shield against despair she had decided early on to live with the expectation of doom, an inspired tactic, because, by expecting it, it never fully arrived.

stepping them into that elsewhere from which all music takes its origins.

there was light and a lightening, a lifting, and when I stepped outside the air had the slender, quickened and hopeful spirit that is in the word April.

By the end of the first week, the rules proved written on water and she nodded more often, becoming aware that an endless humility was what was required of us in the last act.

was already different because I was a twin. Funny how you can say that: I am a twin. Not I am one of twins, but I actually am A Twin. Like there's two of me all the time, this other one right here beside me whether you can see him or not. Or as if you're saying, I'm a Half.

It seems to me the true and individual nature of a human being's eyes defy description, or at least my capabilities. They're not like anything else, or anyone else's, and may be the most perfect proof of the existence of a Creator.

The world is more outlandish than some people's imaginations.

some things, most things in my experience, are more vivid when you haven't seen them

Is that true, Ruth?' Mrs Quinty asked, eyes enormous and brows lifted, missing altogether the point of stories.

You've still time to go back and right all the mistakes you've made.

Stephen did not intend to go to the concert, not because he disapproved or wanted to distance himself from the notion of such music in a place like west Clare, but because there would be people there.

the gypsies never journeyed toward an end, for motion was an end in itself

Beside the river there are two things you never forget, that the moment you look at a river that moment has already passed, and that everything is on its way somewhere else.

That's the thing about boys. Maybe just Irish boys. Boys have No Go Areas, they have an entire geography of places you can't go because if you do they'll crack open, they'll fall apart and you won't be able to put them back together, not ever. Girls know this. We know. Even love can't reach some places.

All these squalls to which we have been subjected are signs that the weather will soon improve and things will go well for us, because it is not possible for the bad or the good to endure forever, and from this it follows that since the bad has lasted so long, the good is close at hand. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

She doesn't know poets can have ash in the soul, or that after so much burning there comes a time when there's nothing left but blowing away or phoenix-rising.

Faith is the most peculiar thing. It's Number One in human mysteries. Because how do you do it? Where do you learn it?

Pieces of story she would discover intact in her. She would draw them into the air with a single phrase and be elsewhere for a moment, eyes distant and eyelashes winging as an image fleeted past. Christy would gently try and bring forth more, but like a fallen chandelier inside her the whole was shattered and beyond repair and there were only exquisite shards.

There were families everywhere, loose loud chains of them wandering down the streets, in and out of shops, young children with rings of ice-cream round their mouths and saddles of freckles across their noses.

So she sees if she can drive him off. The MacCarrolls have that little perverse streak in them. She'd rather break her own heart than have it broken. There's an Irish logic to it.

although she doesn't know it yet here's Love and Death in the same breath

Briefly everything was stopped, as if a hand had reached out and paused the world in its turning. She stood by the cooker now watching him, the pale blueberries of her eyes, watching him with pride, her two hands brought up to her mouth the way she always did when she had feelings two large for words.

Dad moved in with the baffled deepsea shyness of a character just arriving in a story already underway.