Sebastian Barry

“Terror is just the cousin of courage.”

— Sebastian Barry

After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in…

— Sebastian Barry

I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the…

— Sebastian Barry

“This (white settlers) was the section of humanity that was favored in that place, the Indians had no place no more there.…

— Sebastian Barry

“I was well aware how famously or infamously secretive these old institutions can be, no more than ourselves, a mixture of worry,…

— Sebastian Barry

“One moment, fine enough, sorrowing, but fine, sort of. The next, a big bulge of grief in my throat, so that if…

— Sebastian Barry

There is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship.

— Sebastian Barry

“Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the…

— Sebastian Barry

“And what else could we have come here for, except to sense these tiny victories? Not the big victories that crush and…

— Sebastian Barry

“He was looking into that strange place, the middle distance, the most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances. And from his…

— Sebastian Barry

“Slowly he edges nearer. He reaches out a hand, so openly and plainly that I believe I am going to expire. The…

— Sebastian Barry

“Hunger takes away what you are. Everything we were was just nothing then.”

— Sebastian Barry

“The devil, I am beginning to suspect, and great grief it is causing me, has a greater sense of justice than the…

— Sebastian Barry

“who might have been a preacher had she not been cloven”

— Sebastian Barry

“In those strange days when if anything unexpected could happen it probably would.”

— Sebastian Barry

“And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing…

— Sebastian Barry

“The truth may not always be desirable, that one thing leads to another thing, that facts not only lead forward to resolution,…

— Sebastian Barry

“Gods work! Silence so great it hurts your ears, colour so bright it hurts your staring eyes. A vicious ruined class of…

— Sebastian Barry

“Four men killed that day. The phrase sat up in Willie's head like a rat and made a nest for itself there”

— Sebastian Barry

“Things that give you heart are rare enough, better note them in your head when you find them and not forget.”

— Sebastian Barry

A beard on a man is only a way of hiding something, his face of course, but also the inner matters, like…

— Sebastian Barry

“We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.”

— Sebastian Barry

“We were two wood-shavings of humanity in a rough world.”

— Sebastian Barry

“He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet,…

— Sebastian Barry

“We’re strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain’t saying no laws in Washington. We ain’t walking on yon great lawns.…

— Sebastian Barry