Sebastian Barry Quotes

A child is never the author of his own history.

And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of

Roseanne, Roseanne, if I called to you now, my own self calling to my own self, would you hear me? And if you could hear me, would you heed me?

The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising.

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.

I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can't be controlled. But the front of the head is where the pain begins.

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

Trench dirt didn't always wash out, I am sure.