Joseph O'Connor
Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.Collection: Names
If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. If what you are doing is not working, do something else.Collection: Work Out
Beliefs: Those things we hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.Collection: Learning
Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.Collection: Rags
It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.Collection: Mean
There is nothing worse than the ambitions of a talentless person.Collection: Ambition
Dublin was turning into Disneyland with super-pubs, a Purgatory open till five in the morning.Collection: Morning
I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.Collection: Business
Everything is in the way the material is composed.Collection: Way
(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none of the self-importance.Collection: Self
The most important thing I would learn in school was that almost everything I would learn in school would be utterly useless. When I was fifteen I knew the principal industries of the Ruhr Valley, the underlying causes of World War One and what Peig Sayers had for her dinner every day...What I wanted to know when I was fifteen was the best way to chat up girls. That is what I still want to know.Collection: Girl