No place in the world prides itself more on its vigilance and realism, no place considers itself more qualified to censure any flourish of rhetoric or extravagance of aspiration.

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

I may have grown more attentive to the news and more alive to the world history and world-sorrow behind it.

I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.

My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.