Quotes from James Joyce

I want to work with the top people, because only they have the courage and the confidence and the risk-seeking profile that you need.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

A nation is the same people living in the same place.

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use --silence, exile and cunning.

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flown at it to hold it back from flight.

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's mortality.

Mistakes are the portals for discovery.

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Otell me all aboutAnna Livia! I want to hear allabout Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now.

Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

He was outcast from life's feast.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to my church as a human being.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

I think people might be willing to pay for the special odor of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories.

I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.

Agenbite of inwit. Conscience.

Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.