J. P. Donleavy Quotes

Newsboys on the street corners shouting out Herald and Mail. Their tattered jackets too small and their white naked legs and blue white feet on the wet blocks of granite, phlegm streaming from their noses. The evening herd of cold pinched dark coated figures waiting to cross at the pavement's edge, their breath making steam from their mouths. The strange purple of the sky. A ship hooting on the river. Great stacks of barrels quayside being loaded by a ship's derrick under lights. And bouncing on the cobbles, clattering huge carts tugged by massive horses. Followed here and there by impatient automobiles. Must be sadness where so many of the lower orders live inside the big broken windows. Behind these mournful unloved walls.

On Being Old. It's not nice but take comfort that you won't stay that way for ever.

Mountains rising up purple in the evening sky. Clouds pressing darkly from the sea. Horses' hooves clattering on the stony rutted road. Brown bog lands. Heather and gorse. Tiny spots of yellow flowers. Spring lies somewhere. Hiding butterflies who will skip over the countryside. Rain streaks the carriage glass. Breezes blow up through the floor.
[...] Rocking swaying and bouncing, horses churning hooves as the carriage mounts these hills. Galloping around turns, crashing over ruts. By barren bog lands. Sheep running from the path of the rumbling vehicle.

Eat this great bowl of emptiness.

Life getting like a merrygoround with people getting on and off and no one paying for the ride.

"I think I am at a cross roads. And which way I turn may indeed be the direction of my whole destiny."
"Ah you are far too young to speak so. Life it comes. Bang. It knocks you a little this way. Bang. It knock you a little bit the other way. And the direction you go. Well you are lucky if it is not backwards."
"Or bang, it could madam, flatten one altogether."
"Yes, it does do that too. But then we must get up again."

The inhabitants will always see both sides of an argument so long as it can result in a fight.

Darcy Dancer crossing the frosty cobbles of the farmyard. Snorts and stampings in the stables. The whinnies of Molly and Petunia. Who smell me near. Luke mucking out. Forking up the big brown lumps of dung matted with yellow straw and shovelling it into his barrow. At least someone is working. But I suppose I shall have to spout a few hackneyed words to pass the time of day.
"Good morning to you sir. It's grand to see you up and about."
"Thank you Luke. It's a chilly draughty old morning."
"'Tis that sir."
"Gives one a mind to thank god for inventing fire."
"Ah now you've said it, sir. On these winter days you need the little bit of hell the Lord puts flaming in a grate."

But with all my responsibilities these days I thought that a wife would be quite suitable. And save me paying wages.

Ahead two distant houses. Facing each other across the road. Pass between them in a crossfire of eyes.

But damn it all, aren't we just as some great playwright or someone said, actors on a stage.

I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.

"You look so splendid."
"Just my image. The inner Tomson is in a sand storm, the outer one is skiing down the sunny mountain, smiling."
"Shall we bring the inner Tomson somewhere for a cocktail?"
"Let's."

Mr Dangerfield, why don't you believe in hell and things like that?
"Hell is for poor people."

What are you going to do in London?
"Rest from the eyes. Ever notice the eyes along the street. Ever notice them? Looking for something. And in this fine cultured city it's me."