James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.

You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.

Birth was the death of him.

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.

What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

Habit is a great deadener.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

Words are all we have.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.

There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

Do we mean love, when we say love?

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile… a stain upon the silence.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

If you do not love me I shall not be loved If I do not love you I shall not love.