Quotes from Jamie O'Neill

People thought tolerance was the opposite of intolerance. Whereas in fact it was some meaningless neutrality. A child, any child, growing up, discovering herself and the nature of her deepest, most native desires - what use was tolerance to a child? It was encouragement she needed, encouragement first to be, then to love, herself. Or himself, whichever.

MacEmm, can I ask you? I don't know does it mean... does it mean anything with marrying, MacEmm? Doyler and me. " " No Jim, you can't ask me that." "I don't know, you see" "I haven't cigarrettes to be answering questions like that.

His collar pulled and his tie strained against the intrusion. He blinked. He was irresistibly aware of the oddness of moving things.

Jim looked at him. He was lying on his front with a meadow grass sticking out from his mouth. How did Doyler do this? He could make Jim so angry with himself, so ashamed. The next minute, he was all alive, like a spark was inside, like the full of him was electric. How did Doyler do this to him? He really didn't know.

What country is that without a friend in it?

But it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't Easter,' said Jim. 'Indeed and it wouldn't. Are we straight, so?' 'We're straight as a rush.' Doyler spat on his hand and Jim did likewise and their palms rubbed in the smear. 'The crawl it is,' said Doyler and he slipped from the raft. Before he joined him and the sea would wash it away, Jim sniffed his wetting palm. A private smell. Like leather, bodily, raw.

You carry your weather with you, his father was fond of saying. Yet the day was glorious.

You can teel does a fellow like you with a spear of grass, did you know that?" "How do you tell?" "You wave it under his chin, and if his face goes red at all, then you know.

May the earth lie gently on them

Gently this time, though still the touch shot through Jim's clothes, through his skin even. It was this way whenever their bodies met, if limping he brushed against him or laughing he squeezed his arms. The touch charged through like a sputtering tram-wire until it wasn't Doyler he felt but what Doyler touched, which was himself. This is my shoulder, this my leg. And he did not think he had felt himself before, other than in pain or in sin.

Why was he so sad? His son was his son no matter his breeks. But he looked so grown-up in his trousers. Had he tried to keep him a boy and why had he tried it? I wasn't being thick, nor mean, he wanted to say. It's not the time for a boy to be a man. Wait till the war was over.

It's alright. They never catch you twice." "Why wouldn't they?" "They never release you the first time.

Well, no boy loves his chum, or no boy says he does. But he answered, I do. I do, he answered as in some preposterous dissenting nuptial. And MacMurrough remembered how touching it was that a young fellow in a stranger's bed should say that he loved his friend.

Yes, I had known him all my life - and then we met.

I give without loss as I buy without gain.

the impossible strangeness of moving things.

I have no human failings, none whatsoever. All my failings are animal.

So ardent did he sing, each note might carry a breath of his life. People passing stopped to hear. And seeing them gathered, he stumbled among them with his hat held out. It was easy to credit the truth of his song, that his dim old eyes, they once had shone, that his heart, once cheerful, had been bro-o-ken. Two coins chinkled in his hat. And so it was when nights were still and sleep had yet to bind him, round him shone that other light, finely to remind him.

He slept that night thinking of loves and lighthouses. That one love might shine to bring all loves home.

I'm just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me – my neck, say, or my knee – and I'd carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn't lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We'd come so close, do you see, that I wouldn't be surprised out of myself every time you touched.

Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?' 'If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.

He slept that night thinking of loves and lighthouses. That one love might shine to bring all loves home.

The four cautions: Beware a woman in front of you, beware a horse behind of you, beware a cart beside of you, and beware a priest every which way.

Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.