Ireland Is A Great Country To Die

Have Not All Poetic Truths Been Already Stated? The Essence Of A Poetic Truth Is That No Statement Of It Can Be Final.

I Am Dead Against Art's Being Self-expression. I See An Inherent Failure In Any Story Which Fails To Detach Itself From The Author-detach Itself In The Sense That A Well-blown Soap-bubble Detaches Itself From The Bowl Of The Blower's Pipe And Spherically Takes Off Into The Air As A New, Whole, Pure, Iridescent World. Whereas The Ill-blown Bubble, As Children Know, Timidly Adheres To The Bowl's Lip, Then Either Bursts Or Sinks Flatly Back Again.

What Is A Novel? I Say: An Invented Story. At The Same Time A Story Which, Though Invented Has The Power To Ring True. True To What? True To Life As The Reader Knows Life To Be Or, It May Be, Feels Life To Be. And I Mean The Adult, The Grown-up Reader. Such A Reader Has Outgrown Fairy Tales, And We Do Not Want The Fantastic And The Impossible. So I Say To You That A Novel Must Stand Up To The Adult Tests Of Reality.

Fashion Seems To Exist For An Abstract Person Who Is Not You Or Me.

...though One Can Be Callous In Ireland One Cannot Be Wholly Opaque Or Material. An Unearthly Disturbance Works In The Spirit; Reason Can Never Reconcile One To Life; Nothing Allays The Wants One Cannot Explain.