Quotes from James Joyce

There is an atmosphere of spiritual effort here. No other city is quite like it. I wake early, often at 5 o'clock, and start writing at once.

[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.

We were always loyal to lost causes...Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. ~ Professor MacHugh

Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.

To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.

One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature.

Life is the great teacher.

He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life

He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.

You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.

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

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time.

Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.

I don't want to die. Damn death. Long live life.

This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.

Love me. Love my umbrella.

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.