The Ginger Man Quotes

“Dear Mr Skully,

I have caught my neck in a mangle and will be indisposed for eternity.

Yours in death
S.D.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Take deeds
Away.
Play music
please.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“I'm starved for love. Not ordinary love but real love. The love that's like music or something.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“And Mary, what of other men? There are no other men because my heart has gone out to you. And if you don't laugh I'll tell you what i think. I won't laugh. I think it's a fine instrument that God made for the poor likes of us to enjoy.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“The sun of Sunday morning up out of the sleepless sea from black Liverpool. Sitting on the rocks over the water with a jug of coffee. Down there along the harbor pier, trippers in bright colors. Sails moving out to sea. Young couples climbing the Balscaddoon Road to the top of Kilrock to search out grass and lie between the furze. A cold green sea breaking whitely along the granite coast. A day on which all things are born, like uncovered stars.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“I wish I were a Russian. It's so exciting.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Come here till I tell you. Where is the sea high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Some day you’ll show up when I’m back where I belong in this world. When I have what I ought to have. My due. And when you do. My gamekeepers will drive you out and away for good. Out. Away. Out.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Sleep thy last sleep, Free from care and sorrow. Rest where none weep. And we too, shall follow.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“There was a girl who strung me along for two years till I found out what a fraud American womanhood was”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Miss Frost, sometimes I feel fifty three. Seldom, but at times, I feel twenty. Like the days. Ever feel a Saturday on a Tuesday? Or a week of one Friday after another? Recently I've been seventy. But I remember thirty four as a fine age.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“In a bedroom he saw Dangerfield on his knees chopping a large blue blanket with an axe.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Dignity in debt, a personal motto.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“All I want is one break which is not my neck.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“I say good God, Jude, Joseph, and a general variety of the blessed and saintly.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Now tell me how we're going to explain all this hiding and not answering the door and things to Ms. Frost? (You're forgetting Ms. Frost is Catholic. How do you think they survive in Ireland?)”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“What's that girl pressing the book up to her face for. Is she blind, get a pair of glasses you silly bitch.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Beyond this vale of tears, there is a life above, unmeasured by the flight of years and all that life is love.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“I'm a fool. If I were rich I could tell you to go to hell.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“O summer and soft wind. Relieves the heart and makes living cheaper.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Chris’s willowy fingers dug into his thighs and hers closed over his ears and he stopped hearing the soup sound of her mouth and felt the brief pain of her teeth nipping the drawn foreskin and the throb of his groin pumping the teeming fluid into her throat, stopping her gentle voice and dripping from her chords that sung the music of her lonely heart. Her hair lay athwart in clean strands on his body and for the next silent minute he was the sanest man on earth, bled of his seed, rid of his mind.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“This Boston voice squeaking out its song. The yellow light goes out the window on the stubs of windy grass and black rocks. And down the wet steps by gorse stumps and rusty heather to the high water mark and diving pool. Where the seaweeds rise and fall at night in Balscaddoon Bay.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“Have you seen a lot of women?"
"Wouldn't say a lot."
"And what were they like?"
"Naked.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man