Quotes from At Swim, Two Boys

“I’m just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me – my neck, say, or my knee – and I’d carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn’t lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We’d come so close, do you see, that I wouldn’t be surprised out of myself every time you touched.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“It was true what Jim said, this wasn’t the end but the beginning. But the wars would end one day and Jim would come then, to the island they would share. One day surely the wars would end, and Jim would come home, if only to lie broken in MacMurrough’s arms, he would come to his island home. And MacMurrough would have it built for him, brick by brick, washed by the rain and the reckless sea. In the living stream they’d swim a season. For maybe it was true that no man is an island: but he believed that two very well might be.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“The four cautions: Beware a woman in front of you, beware a horse behind of you, beware a cart beside of you, and beware a priest every which way.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“He slept that night thinking of loves and lighthouses. That one love might shine to bring all loves home.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“He saw the black water and the declining sun and the swan dipping down, its white wings flashing, and slowing and slowing till silver ripples carried it home. It was a scene which seemed the heart of this land. The lowing sun and the one star waking, white wings on a black water, and the smell of rain, and the long lane fading where a voice comes in the falling night.
--Ireland, said Scrotes.
--Yes, this is Ireland.
”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“We're extraordinary people. We must do extraordinary things.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“—Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literatures for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light.
"—For only with pride may a man prosper. With pride, all things follow. Without he have pride he is a shadowy skulk whose season is night. ”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“It was far too absurd to die of a Tuesday”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?’
‘If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“In the weeks we'd been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank, where time stops and heaven reaches down to earth and gives us that ration of what is from birth divinely ours. We looked the other way. We spoke of everything but. But we've always known, and not saying anything now confirmed it all the more. We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Will I begin it? said Doyler laughing. That's all that's in it, he laughing said.

Oh sure that grin. Oh sure that wonderful saucerful grin. Jim sat on the grass and he plucked at the blades. He knew for certain sure that Doyler would be turning from him again. He said, You'll be walking away from me soon, won't you now? There was no answer. Jim plucked the grass and stared beyond where the waves broke on the island shore. He said, I wish you wouldn't Doyler. It does break my heart when you walk away.

Old pal o' me heart, said Doyler.

But already he had turned, and he was walking away. Walking that slow dreadful slope with never a leaf or a stone. Walking; and though Jim tried to keep pace, e could not, and sometimes he called out, Doyler! Doyler! but he never heard or he did not heed, only farther and farther he walked away. And when Jim woke from these dreams, if he did not remember, he knew he had dreamt, for the feeling inside him of not feeling at all. And it was hard then to make his day.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“If you carry the weather with you, then character is determined by the prevailing wind”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“He stretched out in the grass too, leaning on his elbow, facing his friend, the pal of his heart, happy to watch him, fondly, his face. The grass was wonderfully cool in the shadows. It gave a fringy brush to his legs. Doyler grinned. He took the grass stem from his mouth and tickled its ear under Jim's chin. 'You can tell does a fellow like you with a spear of grass, did you know that?'
'How do you tell?'
'You wave it under his chin, and if his face goes red at all, then you know.'
Jim laughed. The blush had risen, as of course it must, but for once he could be glad of it. He thought how lovely it would be to touch at this moment. The notion hadn't formed before Doyler's leg came to rest against his own. It pressed ever so lightly, and Jim pressed lightly back. he smiled with his bottom lip caught in his teeth, for it was wonderful to lie in the long grass, with just this tiny pressure of touch between.
Then Doyler said, 'I think I'm going to ask for a kiss.'
And Jim said, 'I think I hoped if you would.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“My black-headed black-eyed boy. I remember every day of you. How would I forget?”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Hush, said a wave. Rush, said its fellow”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“A wedding left the church and, meeting a funeral, walked three steps with the dead.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“The world would say that we did not exist, that only our actions, our habits, were real, which the world called our crimes or our sins. But Scrotes began to think that we did indeed exist. That we had a nature our own, which was not another's perverted or turned to sin. Our actions could not be crimes, he believed, because they were the expressions of a nature, of an existence even. Which came first, he asked, the deed or the doer? And he began to answer that, for some, it was the doer.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Did you not look upon the world this morning and imagine it as the boy might see it? And did you not recognize the mist and the dew and the birdsong as elements not of a place or a time but of a spirit? And did you not envy the boy his spirit? For you know there can be no power over him who freely gives what another would take. Such a one has the capacity to love. Freely, naively, to say I do.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“They do say money is the root of all evil."

I thought that was supposed to be the love of money."

There's neat for you. 'Tis them without it that loves it best.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Were Wilde's panthers grateful or rebellious? Eventually, of course, one prefers a rebellious bedfellow. But it requires a degree of gratitude to get him into bed in the first place”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“The people shall further be graded according to wealth, and—humorous touch this—the more obviously a man labor, the more stinting shall be his reward; the more he work in the out-of-doors, the thinner his clothing shall be; the more his labor filthy him, the less water shall he have to wash”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“MacMurrough shifted his gaze from the thick spittle-wet mouth and stared instead through the garden windows. What a dreary drunk he was. He recalled the Spartan custom of inebriating slaves that young men should see how contemptible was drunkenness. Nowadays we leave it to our leshishlashors.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“Silence then, a world at rest. Not the antithesis of dust, of speed, but its complement. The gloved hand ungloved its partner which in turn ungloved its mate. Fingers untied her chiffon and felt for hair under her hat. Strays tidied behind her ears. The chiffon became a scarf, her hands reawoke the wide sloping brim of her hat. Gradually the earth too rewoke. Hedges chirruped to life, a crow bickered above, the sea resumed its reverend tide. Her hat was hopelessly demode but the fashion was too ridiculous: she refused to wear flower-pots, and would have nothing to do with feathery things she had not shot herself.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“His collar pulled and his tie strained against the intrusion. He blinked. He was irresistibly aware of the oddness of moving things.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“So ardent did he sing, each note might carry a breath of his life. People passing stopped to hear. And seeing them gathered, he stumbled among them with his hat held out. It was easy to credit the truth of his song, that his dim old eyes, they once had shone, that his heart, once cheerful, had been bro-o-ken. Two coins chinkled in his hat. And so it was when nights were still and sleep had yet to bind him, round him shone that other light, fondly to remind him.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“A flash of his grin. "I'll see you won't fall in," he said and the arm went round Jim's shoulder.
Gently this time, though still the touch shot through Jim's clothes, through his skin even. It was this way whenever their bodies met, if limping he brushed against him or laughing he squeezed his arm. The touch charged through like a sputtering tram-wire until it wasn't Doyler he felt but what Doyler touched, which was himself. This is my shoulder, this my leg. And he did not think he had felt himself before, other than in pain or in sin.
"Are we straight so?"
"Aye, we're straight," said Jim.
"Straight as a rush, so we are.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“I don't hate the English and I don't know do I love the Irish. But I love him. I'm sure of that now. And he's my country.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“All love does ever rightly show humanity our tenderness.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

“MacEmm, can I ask you? I don't know does it mean... does it mean anything with marrying, MacEmm? Doyler and me. "
" No Jim, you can't ask me that."
"I don't know, you see"
"I haven't cigarrettes to be answering questions like that.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys

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