Jp Donleavy Quotes

Writing is turning life's worst moments into money.

Revenge is what I want. Nothing but pure unadulterated revenge. But my mother brought me up to be a lady.

Electronic books are a bad thing because they cannot be accumulated on shelves to remind you of your past, to impress your neighbors and colleagues, and to help prevent divorces thanks to the sheer bother of arguing over who owns what.

New York City is where specks of dust aspire randomly with all their cunning to become grains of sand.

Dear Mr Skully, I have caught my neck in a mangle and will be indisposed for eternity. Yours in death S.D.

When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Take deeds Away. Play music please.

You know, there must be happiness somewhere, when a lawyer dies.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Writing: Turning one's worst moments into profit.

See all the women seated, youth in their face lifts, old age in their hands.

I'm starved for love. Not ordinary love but real love. The love that's like music or something.

But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.

I wish I were a Russian. It's so exciting.

And Mary, what of other men? There are no other men because my heart has gone out to you. And if you don't laugh I'll tell you what i think. I won't laugh. I think it's a fine instrument that God made for the poor likes of us to enjoy.

Come here till I tell you. Where is the sea high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling.

The purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead with shame.

How when one is able to indulge the luxury of beginning one's life again. All one thinks To do Is end it

Lawyers, ah yes, they have courage. But only when it is time to send the bill.

Not using that handy maxim a man is what he makes his dough at and alas how much. Sometimes it is a gentle gesture to remind people of their big time possibilities. Makes them like you.

Some day you’ll show up when I’m back where I belong in this world. When I have what I ought to have. My due. And when you do. My gamekeepers will drive you out and away for good. Out. Away. Out.

The sun of Sunday morning up out of the sleepless sea from black Liverpool. Sitting on the rocks over the water with a jug of coffee. Down there along the harbor pier, trippers in bright colors. Sails moving out to sea. Young couples climbing the Balscaddoon Road to the top of Kilrock to search out grass and lie between the furze. A cold green sea breaking whitely along the granite coast. A day on which all things are born, like uncovered stars.

The only slight disconcertance being that in the middle of looking at a paintings [in the Museum of Modern Art] she always found herself desperately needing to take a pee. And grandmother's voice in her ear. 'My dear, if you really have to, only clean, very clean rest rooms will do.

She thought too that women didn't know what to do with themselves these days which could turn them into harridans. Hardly a female friend she knew wasn't miserable. Either mind dumb with children, or in the married condition married to an earnest toiler, or lonely unmarried in their successful career.

Sleep thy last sleep, Free from care and sorrow. Rest where none weep. And we too, shall follow.

Who is that man with mommie. These are lawyers. What are lawyers. They are men who look things up in big books.

I don’t like lawyers, nannie.” “No one likes lawyers, little boy.

Miss Frost, sometimes I feel fifty three. Seldom, but at times, I feel twenty. Like the days. Ever feel a Saturday on a Tuesday? Or a week of one Friday after another? Recently I've been seventy. But I remember thirty four as a fine age.

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth.

O summer and soft wind. Relieves the heart and makes living cheaper.

Marion lunged, her slap landing across his jaw... He drove his fist into Marion's face.

I'm a fool. If I were rich I could tell you to go to hell.

All I want is one break which is not my neck.

Dignity in debt, a personal motto.

In a bedroom he saw Dangerfield on his knees chopping a large blue blanket with an axe.

Beyond this vale of tears, there is a life above, unmeasured by the flight of years and all that life is love.

What's that girl pressing the book up to her face for. Is she blind, get a pair of glasses you silly bitch.

Now tell me how we're going to explain all this hiding and not answering the door and things to Ms. Frost? (You're forgetting Ms. Frost is Catholic. How do you think they survive in Ireland?)

I say good God, Jude, Joseph, and a general variety of the blessed and saintly.

Those first weeks in Dublin memorable for living life with what one can only describe as an inscrutable insobrietous insouciance. Unwise

Chris’s willowy fingers dug into his thighs and hers closed over his ears and he stopped hearing the soup sound of her mouth and felt the brief pain of her teeth nipping the drawn foreskin and the throb of his groin pumping the teeming fluid into her throat, stopping her gentle voice and dripping from her chords that sung the music of her lonely heart. Her hair lay athwart in clean strands on his body and for the next silent minute he was the sanest man on earth, bled of his seed, rid of his mind.

You have haven’t you madam, had much sorrow in your life.” “Ah but when you expect little else, it is then just life.

Ah yes, why are men more fond of dogs than other men.” “Monsieur I think that is perhaps on this occasion out of my arrondissement to answer.

A true Frenchman does not reserve all valour for the battle field but for the dinner table.

Have you seen a lot of women?" "Wouldn't say a lot." "And what were they like?" "Naked.

This Boston voice squeaking out its song. The yellow light goes out the window on the stubs of windy grass and black rocks. And down the wet steps by gorse stumps and rusty heather to the high water mark and diving pool. Where the seaweeds rise and fall at night in Balscaddoon Bay.

If there's a sickness in America, it's the lack of materialism.

There was a girl who strung me along for two years till I found out what a fraud American womanhood was