I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned. - Peter Ackroyd

The smell of the library was always the same – the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as "the steam of the social soup".

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.