Quotes from Sebastian Barry

Sometimes we are so foolish in our thoughts that even fools would baulk at what we are thinking.

We been through many slaughters, John Cole and me. But I am as peaceful and easy now as I ever been. Fear flies off and my box of thoughts feels light.

In my exultation I forget I ain't got a bean of money but it don't concern me and I know I can rely on the kindness of folk along the way. The ones that don't try to rob me will feed me. That how it is in America.

may be immune to typhoid, tetanus, chickenpox, diphtheria, but never memory. There is no inoculation against that.

It was an earthquake, tearing at the sons of America, trying to swallow them up. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sons, that women had reared, had kissed and screamed at, and that fathers had stared intently in their cots, to see themselves in the wondrous mirrors of their babies.

Children may feel epic and large to theyselves and yet be only scraps to view.

of day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.

Because a lone person takes great comfort from her people, in the watches of the night, even the memory of them.

The truth may not always be desirable, that one thing leads to another thing, that facts not only lead forward to resolution, but backwards into the shadows, and sometimes into the various little hells we make for each other.

The world is not full of betrayers, it is full of people with decent motives and a full desire to do right by those who know them and love them.

It had more darkness in it than any daylight could unpick.

You have to try to shore up the levee when the flood races down. Even with your bare hands.

The world ain't worth nothing unless you true in it.

This goes to prove yet again that few people stick to the articles of their characters, and will keep breaking away from them.

guess I had no choice in the matter. Once your mother is taken from you you can't ever catch up with her again. You can't cry out 'Wait for me' when the winds turn cold under a wolf moon and she has walked far ahead of you across the grasses searching for wood.

three living men had seen horrors, and those who see horrors may do horrors just as bad, that is the law of life and war. Soon

And of course I started to cry. Not for myself strangely enough, though I am sure I could have, with capital and interest, but no, not for myself. For my mother? Who can really itemise the cause of our human tears?

Oh yes I am thinking the human soul is a very slight thing, and not much evolution has gone into it I fear. It is a vague slight notion with not even a proper niche in the body. And yet is the only thing we have that God will measure.

There is a craziness in it all that betokens a kind of delicious freedom. Notions are cast off. If only for a moment. They seen a flickering picture of beauty.

It wasn't a crime to beat an Indian, not at all.

What would have comforted that writhing woman in a lost bed in the lost land of Strandhill I do not know. If I were a horse they would have shot me out of mercy.

again. 'I do remember terrible dark things, and loss, and noise, but it is like one of those terrible dark pictures that hang in churches, God knows why, because you cannot see a thing in them.' 'Mrs McNulty, that is a beautiful description of traumatic memory.

Is it like a rust, a rheum about the heart?

I know I can rely on the kindness of folk along the way. The ones that don't try to rob me will feed me. That how it is in America.