Joseph O'Connor

It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.

— Joseph O'Connor

“The English possessed as many words for stealing as the Irish had for seaweed or guilt.”

— Joseph O'Connor

“That each man is the sum of his choices is nothing less than the truth. And each, perhaps, is also something else.”

— Joseph O'Connor

“...but as his father used to say when he had a few drinks taken, you couldn't expect bloody miracles when you were…

— Joseph O'Connor

The most important thing I would learn in school was that almost everything I would learn in school would be utterly useless.…

— Joseph O'Connor

“They had far more in common than either realised. One was born Catholic, the other Protestant. One was born Irish, the other…

— Joseph O'Connor

Dublin was turning into Disneyland with super-pubs, a Purgatory open till five in the morning.

— Joseph O'Connor

(The short story) is a form that has all the power of the novel - some would say more - but none…

— Joseph O'Connor

“And if ever you wanted to quit your impatient girl truly, and our little story had to be stored away in a…

— Joseph O'Connor

“Happy as a threaded needle”

— Joseph O'Connor

I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.

— Joseph O'Connor

Everything is in the way the material is composed.

— Joseph O'Connor

Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.

— Joseph O'Connor

There is nothing worse than the ambitions of a talentless person.

— Joseph O'Connor

If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. If what you are doing is not working,…

— Joseph O'Connor

“Things improved when we got down to the specifics. Step one: Basic Flirtation. Lucy said you had to look the desired person…

— Joseph O'Connor

“But why would they do that? What is to be asked? He was a man who sees into things -- very ordinary…

— Joseph O'Connor

“He was a beautiful man. What more than this need be said? The sort of man who makes you think the movement…

— Joseph O'Connor

Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.

— Joseph O'Connor

“He grew restless with Connemara and its bleak possibilities, its blasted bogscape and lunar rockiness, the grey desolation of everything around him,…

— Joseph O'Connor

“They had no previous connection whatever with Connemara; but they saw connections where others who should have seen them simply looked the…

— Joseph O'Connor

“If you go through the world looking for excellence, you will find excellence. If you go through the world looking for problems…

— Joseph O'Connor

Beliefs: Those things we hold to be true despite evidence to the contrary.

— Joseph O'Connor

“Any assemblage comprising human beings, any family, any party, any tribe, any nation, will bind itself together not by what it shares…

— Joseph O'Connor

“The world's full of idiots, divas and assholes, mainly in Ireland. In Ireland, one cannot achieve anything if he is not a…

— Joseph O'Connor