Brian Friel Quotes

#1. I had grandparents who were native Irish speakers, and also, two of the four grandparents were illiterate.

Brian Friel

#2. Yes, it is a rich language, Lieutenant, full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self-deception - a syntax opulent with tomorrows. It is our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes; our only method of replying to ... inevitabilities.

Brian Friel

#3. People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.

Brian Friel

#4. Confusion is not an ignoble condition

Brian Friel

#5. But remember that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen - to use an image you'll understand - it can happen that a civilisation can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of ... fact.

Brian Friel

#6. The Troubles are a pigmentation in our lives here, a constant irritation that detracts from real life. But life has to do with something else as well, and it's the other things which are the more permanent and real.

Brian Friel

#7. I know now why I stopped writing short stories. It was at the point when I recognised how difficult they were.

Brian Friel

#8. Even if I did speak Irish, I'd always be considered an outsider here, wouldn't I? I may learn the password but the language of the tribe will always elude me, won't it? The private core will always be ... hermetic, won't it?

Brian Friel

#9. To remember everything is a form of madness.

Brian Friel

#10. It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.

Brian Friel

#11. No matter how long the sun may linger on his long and weary journey, at length evening comes with its sacred song.

Brian Friel