Days Without End: AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Sebastian Barry

You wouldn’t believe the latitude the law allows in America for a saloon owner to be killing miners, it’s wide.

When I met John Cole that’s who I was, a human louse, even evil people shunned me and the good had no use for me. That’s where I started. Gives an idea of the victory meeting John Cole was. First time I felt like a human person again. And that’s enough of that, I say, I don’t want to say no more. Silence.

The mind is a wild liar and I don’t trust much in it that I find there.

It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you or your kin, and then Death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.

I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now.

Thousands die everywhere always. The world don’t care much, it just don’t mind much.

That human will. You got to give homage to it. I seen it many times. It ain’t so rare. But it is the best of us.

Every little thing she says has grammar in it, she sounds like a bishop.

Things just go on. Lot of life is just like that.

Queer way to make a living but we made it all the same.

Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too.

When that old ancient Cromwell come to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work. Ain’t that the way of the world. No such item as a virtuous people.