159 Quotes by Sebastian Barry

I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can’t be controlled. But the front of the head is where the pain begins.

The men hunched around, talking with the gaiety of souls about to eat plentifully, with the empty dark country about us, and the strange fabric of frost and frozen wind falling on our shoulders, and the great black sky of stars above us like a huge tray of gems and diamonds.

I could feel myself melting away. I thought I was like water but I had no cup to hold me.

Of course I was young, very young, but, as I remember it, no one is ever quite so old as a fifteen-year-old girl.

Tears have a better character cried alone. Pity can sometimes be more wolf than dog.

He carried a highly ecclesiastical umbrella, like something real and austere, that said its prayers at night in the hatstand. I.

A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.

But Fr Gaunt was so clipped and trim he had no antennae at all for grief. He was like a singer who knows the words and can sing, but cannot sing the song as conceived in the heart of the composer. Mostly he was dry. He spoke over young and old with the same dry music. But.

I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved towards it, I couldn’t help it.