Sebastian Barry (born 5 July 1955) is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers.
The human animal began as a mere wriggling thing in the ancient seas, struggling out onto land with many regrets. That is what brings us so full of longing to the sea.
It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood.
There is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship.
And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.
I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.
What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?
There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul
I haven't really written my plays and books - I've heard them. The stories are there already, singing in your genes and in your blood.
I thought if I was going to live a life in this land I was accidentally born on, I must people it; I must have a history. . . . I'm looking for these people inside me, wherever they may be; that is my form of research.
For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.
Because faithfulness is not a human question, but a divine one.
It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.
The world is not full of betrayers, it is full of people with decent motives and a full desire to do right by those who know them and love them. This is a little-known truth, but I think it is a truth nonetheless. Empirically, from all the years of my work, I would attest to that. I know it is a miraculous conclusion, but there it is. We like to make strangers of everyone. We are not wolves, but lambs astonished in the margins of the fields by sunlight and summer.
A beard on a man is only a way of hiding something, his face of course, but also the inner matters, like a hedge around a secret garden, or a cover over a bird cage.
That is because at the close of the day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.
It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark.
Tears have a better character cried alone. Pity can sometimes be more wolf than dog.