16 Quotes by Brian Friel

People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.

The Troubles are a pigmentation in our lives here, a constant irritation that detracts from real life. But life has to do with something else as well, and it’s the other things which are the more permanent and real.

Say anything at all – I love the sound of your speech.

Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement – as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary...

I know now why I stopped writing short stories. It was at the point when I recognised how difficult they were.

I was a member of the Nationalist Party for several years. I don't remember how long. Those were very dreary days, because the Nationalist Party... it's hard to describe what it was. I suppose it held on to some kind of little faith, you know? It wasn't even sure what the faith was, and it was a very despised enterprise by everybody.

I had grandparents who were native Irish speakers, and also, two of the four grandparents were illiterate.