MichaelR > MichaelR's Quotes

“He was in his secret room in the heart now. Having entered he could be bold. A man hasn't to be on his best behavior in Heaven; he can kick the furniture around. He can stoop down and picks up lumps of mortality without being born again to die.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, Tarry Flynn

“A man innocently dabbles in words and rhymes and finds that it is his life”
― Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems

“He read me Whitman, of whom he was very fond, and also Emerson.
I didn't like Whitman, and said so. I always thought him a writer who tried to bully his way to prophecy. Of Emerson at the time I had no opinions to offer. I found him out later to be a sugary humbug. His transcendental bunkum sickened me.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, The Green Fool

“I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, The Complete Poems

“My advice is this, do whatever pleases yourself. These things don’t matter. What does matter is that if you have anything worth while in you, any talent, you should deliver it. Nothing must turn you from that.”
― Patrick Kavanagh, Tarry Flynn

“...I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem