Sebastian Barry Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

Do you not feel that this island is moored only lightly to the sea-bed, and might be off for the Americas at any moment?

Sebastian Barry
It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood.

Sebastian Barry
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.

Sebastian Barry
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.

Sebastian Barry
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.

Sebastian Barry
It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.

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.

Sebastian Barry
Because faithfulness is not a human question, but a divine one.

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

Sebastian Barry
And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.

Sebastian Barry
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.

Sebastian Barry
The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.

Sebastian Barry
Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.

Sebastian Barry
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.

Sebastian Barry
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.

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

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

Sebastian Barry
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.

Sebastian Barry