J P Donleavy Quotes

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

J.P. Donleavy

#2. When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.

J.P. Donleavy

#3. The best book of the year, Grobel's writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Huston's great films.

J.P. Donleavy

#4. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#5. On Being Old. It's not nice but take comfort that you won't stay that way for ever.

J.P. Donleavy

#6. I'm all for Christianity, but insolence must be put down.

J.P. Donleavy

#7. At the age of 18 I don't think that I thought very differently than I did at the age of 25. I think we instinctively have the knowledge and adapt the knowledge we need.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

#9. I'm sick of people. The less I have to do with them for the rest of my life the better. I don't careif I die.

J.P. Donleavy

#10. The inhabitants will always see both sides of an argument so long as it can result in a fight.

J.P. Donleavy

#11. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#12. Writing: Turning one's worst moments into profit.

J.P. Donleavy

#13. ... With a slight miscalculated leap cleared to the iron picket fence. Put the fear of God into me, picket fences and balls don't mix.

J.P. Donleavy

#14. Rid the mind of knowledge when looking for pleasure. Or start thinking and find a lot of pain.

J.P. Donleavy

#15. And no. I must not go on thinking. For the pain will never go away. You just go on and live. In the dust of desertion. Still falling where last I loved.

J.P. Donleavy

#16. Sometimes you write and you find yourself almost wondering how it will turn out. I don't think every writer sort of almost admits that at some stage his books can take on their own kind of life it selves and simply lead away into directions that they're not kind of prepared for.

J.P. Donleavy

#17. Expect the worst
And that's what
You'll get
Only it will be
Much worse.

J.P. Donleavy

#18. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#19. To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.

J.P. Donleavy

#20. Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

#22. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

#24. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#25. Blessed are they who in this sea of frailty,
climb aboard a piece of ass as it floats by.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

#27. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#28. Writing is turning life's worst moments into money.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

#30. I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy

#33. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#34. 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.

J.P. Donleavy

#35. Take deeds
Away.
Play music
please.

J.P. Donleavy

#36. If you're going to love somebody, love somebody who needs it.

J.P. Donleavy

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

J.P. Donleavy