It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship. It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S.,… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeebling fatalism, a sense that… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“...even my work, the largest of the pots and pans I'd placed under my life's leaking ceiling, had become to small to contain my… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
I think you sense the metaphorical resonance of what you're writing without analysing it too carefully. That leads you down dead ends. You stop… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
I have been to Turkey almost every summer holiday of my life and pretty much only on summer holidays, which makes me a very… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“I see, I tell him, looking from him to Rachel and again to him. Then I turn to look for what it is we're… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“Like an old door, ever man past a certain age comes with historical warps and creaks of one kind or another, and a woman… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“She merely wiped the floor with paper towels and said nothing, brushing her free hand against my shoulder blade—my shoulder blade!—as she carried the… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“I am vertiginously reminded that the human race refreshes itself in absolute ignorance and that without an enormous, never-ending labor of pedagogy, everything would… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable. — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“A self-evident and prefabricated symbolism attaches itself to this slow climb to the zenith, and we are not so foolishly ironic, or confident, as… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“...bright-shirted racers of the Tour de France zoomed by like fantastically bicycling macaws.” — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway. — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“For those under the age of 45 it seemed that world events had finally contrived a meaningful test of their capacity for conscientious political… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
“Perhaps the relevant truth- and it's one whose existence was apparent to my wife, and I'm sure to much of the world, long before… — Joseph O'Neill Copy Share Image
