Quotes from Sebastian Barry

What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?

For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.

The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.

we are never old to ourselves. That is because at the close of the day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.

I wanted to listen to him, but I did not want to answer now. That strange responsibility we feel towards others when they speak, to offer them the solace of any answer. Poor humans! And anyway he had not asked a question. He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet, like all of us.

Now yet again I discover I do not have the language, the lingo, to talk to her about this, or about anything. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.

Well, all speaking is difficult, whether peril attends it or not. Sometimes peril to the body, sometimes a more intimate, miniature, invisible peril to the soul. When to speak at all is a betrayal of something, perhaps a something not even identified, hiding inside the chambers of the body like a scared refugee in a site of war.

I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved towards it, I couldn't help it.

I suppose therefore God is the connoisseur of filthied hearts and souls, and can see the old, the first pattern in them, and cherish them for that.

And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.

They say we are creatures raised by God above the animals but any man that has lived knows that's damned lies.

But I had no idea what I looked like. Children may feel epic and large to theyselves and yet be only scraps to view.

Tears have a better character cried alone. Pity can sometimes be more wolf than dog.

In the darkness as we lie side by side John Cole's left hand snakes over under the sheets and takes a hold of my right hand. We listen to the cries of the night revellers outside and hear the horses tramping along the ways. We're holding hands then like lovers who have just met or how we imagine lovers might be in the unknown realm where lovers act as lovers without concealment.

Clinton and his cigar was so much greater a man than Bush and his rifle.

We were two wood-shavings of humanity in a rough world.

History needs to be mightily inventive about human life because bare life is an accusation against man's dominion of the earth.

To be alone, but to be pierced through with a kingly joy, now and then, as I believe I am, is a great possession indeed.

A beard on a man is only a way of hiding something, his face of course, but also the inner matters, like a hedge around a secret garden, or a cover over a bird cage.

There's no soldier don't have a queer little spot in his wretched heart for his enemy, that's just a fact.

What can I tell you further? I once lived among humankind, and found them in their generality to be cruel and cold, and yet could mention the names of three or four that were like angels. I suppose we measure the importance of our days by those few angels we spy among us, and yet aren't like them.

I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everything, if you follow the thread long enough

And he is about seventy, very dignifed, unwell, and mad. Yes, he is mad. That is to say, psychotic, and I see from his file that he unfortunately was found years ago sheltering in a schoolyard, under a seat, with three dead dogs tied to his leg, which he was dragging about with him. But as I spoke to him, all I could feel was love. That was ridiculous. And I am deeply, deeply suspicious of it.

If it had been a great necessity, if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strategist and will work miracles of timing to assist our destruction.