Quotes by Kevin Barry - Page 1

I have been as influenced by music and films as by books.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Influenced
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Libraries are where we learn that we can live our lives through books.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Our Lives
Libraries
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I like to be happy when I'm writing. If not, then how will the reader manage?
Kevin Barry / Writer
Manage
Reader
Be Happy
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'City of Bohane' has been optioned for film, and I've finished a first draft of the script.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Finished
Draft
Script
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I was freelancing for years in Cork and around. I also wrote freelance pieces for 'The Irish Times.'
Kevin Barry / Writer
Cork
Freelance
Irish
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Tricky the paths a long love might follow, like the spiral down twists of a raindrop on a windowpane.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Long
Might
Raindrops
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Don DeLillo's 'White Noise,' which I read when I was 19. It showed me that a book can be funny as hell and deadly serious.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Noise
Deadly
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I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Journalism
Pragmatic
Craft
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Very first thing in the morning, I spew some rough genius directly on to the laptop. Then I have coffee and rewrite for three hours.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Coffee
Rough
Directly
First Thing
Laptop
Rewrite
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It is nothing, to give one’s life for Ireland. I’m not the first and maybe I won’t be the last. What’s my life compared with the cause?
Kevin Barry / Writer
Firsts
Giving
Lasts
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When you wake up, instead of checking emails on your phone, or counting your retweets, pick up a pen and scratch a few sentences into a notebook.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Notebook
Counting
Sentences
Wake Up
Checking
Phone
Emails
Pen
Scratch
Wake
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Frazzled and delirious, as I've just finished a new book of stories. I feel like Moses staggering down the mountainside with the tablets of stone.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Moses
Staggering
Tablets
New Book
Stone
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I wanted to write about Jews in Montana, so I went there by plane and bus, only to discover that there are no Jews in Montana. It didn't deter me.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Bus
Montana
Deter
Discover
Jews
Plane
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I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Cusp
Towards
Mode
Operate
Push
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Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hangover. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Hangover
Passion
Thinking
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There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.'
Kevin Barry / Writer
American Television
Sopranos
Television
Wire
Deadwood
The Sopranos
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The fundamental human truth underpinning 'Ox Mountain Death Song' is that men so very often turn into their fathers. The way that everything gets passed down.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Death
Mountain
Song
Fathers
Fundamental
Gets
Ox
Passed
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I go to Spain a lot, in winter, for a blast of sunlight to banish the blues brought on by the Irish greys and drizzle. I love the cities of the Spanish interior.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Blast
Cities
Spain
Sunlight
Winter
Banish
Blues
Brought
Interior
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What greatly annoys me is sometimes you see the short story being described as a training ground for the novel. Kind of like an apprenticeship. And in lots of ways, it's a far harder form.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Apprenticeship
Short Story
Annoys
Greatly
Training Ground
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It was quite risky to open the book with one of my quieter stories; I'm kind of trying, I think, to lure readers into a false sense of security and then assault them with a couple really loud, really strange stories.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Assault
Loud
Lure
False
False Sense
Quieter
Readers
Risky
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I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Mind Your Will
Earn
Mind Will Your
Mornings
Slow
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In my very early days as a journalist, as a cub reporter on a local newspaper, I used to cover the district courthouse in Limerick city - all human life passed through that establishment, and my time there remains a source of inspiration.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Establishment
Human Life
Inspiration
My Time
Remains
Life Time City
District
Courthouse
Cover
Cub
Reporter
Early Days
Local
Newspaper
Passed
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The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Break
Natural
Rope
Short Story
Walk Always Your
Easily
Short
Walk
Mode
Quickly
Sentence
Step
Tightrope
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I've had lots of people saying very nice things about the work. But I genuinely feel in the course of a writing career you're going to have people say very nice things and some not-so-nice things, and if at all possible you should try to ignore both.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Nice Things
Work People Feel
Genuinely
Ignore
People Say
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I greatly enjoyed working as a freelance journalist, because it gets you out of the house, and it gets you talking to people, but it wasn't satisfying all of my cravings, and I knew that I needed to work with the other side of my brain - the darker, murkier side!
Kevin Barry / Writer
Enjoyed
Satisfying
Work Brain People
Darker
Freelance
Greatly
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Get up, groan, write a bit, moan, eat breakfast, write some more, cycle my bike through the Sligo hills, make up country songs as I pedal along, sing them, have lunch, have a nap, groan, moan, write a small bit more, cook dinner, feed wifey, open a bottle, or several, slump, sleep.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Bike
Breakfast
Dinner
Hills
Lunch
Breakfast Lunch Dinner
Bottle
Nap
Feed
Cycle
Eat Breakfast
Make Up
Moan
Pedal
Several
Slump
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I was a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Limerick city, and I used to cover the district court meetings. All of life passed through the Limerick courthouse. Misery, malevolence, the dark side of humanity... I tell ya, it made 'Angela's Ashes' look like 'The Wonderful World of Disney.'
Kevin Barry / Writer
Angela
Ashes
Court
Dark
Dark Side
Humanity
Meetings
Misery
Wonderful
Side
City
Cover
Cub
Disney
Reporter
Life Look World
Local
Newspaper
Passed
Ya
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I was writing fiction in my 20s but in a pretty undisciplined way - late at night, maybe, after I'd peeled myself from the walls of a nightclub and crawled home along the gutters. But I slowly became more serious and more devout in my work, and I fell seriously in love with the short story form.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Short Story
Undisciplined
Love Work Home
Devout
Slowly
Nightclub
Walls
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I think the language as spoken in Limerick and Cork has not really been written; 'City of Bohane' is a combination of the two. Bohane is a little kingdom. When I began writing it, I realised that it was in the future and that it was a place that didn't care about anything that happened outside it.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Combination
Cork
Realised
Spoken
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One of the things I've been most excited by is U.S. television drama. For my money, it's some of the greatest narrative art of our time. Each series is like a 19th-century Russian novel: you need to do a lot of work in the first few episodes, just as you do in the first 50-60 pages of those books.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Episodes
Narrative
Our Time
Pages
Art Time Work
Work Time Art
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Irish writing is so strong that it can feel like the country has all been covered, but in fact, there are so many gaps. The small west of Ireland cities and the working classes there have almost never appeared in Irish literature, simply because those communities were never in the way of producing books.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Cities
Covered
Gaps
Ireland
Appeared
Classes
Communities
Producing
Working Classes
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I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder, writing short stories, novels, memoir, travelogue, critical biography. He lived to be almost 100, and he never stopped, and his work is unified by a great generosity of spirit.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Affinity
Critical
Generosity
Memoir
Unified
Work Great Always
Biography
Ear
Primarily
Short Stories
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At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews - Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ireland, that didn't work out very well, as you can imagine.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Great American
Imagine
Ireland
Needed
Philip
Work Out
Work Great Me
Jewish
Disastrous
Effect
Jews
Roth
Saul
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I remember, as a child, a particular groan that my father would sound when he crawled from the bed in the morning. I hear the same groan now, precisely, every morning, when I emerge from my own lair. It's more than an expression of physical weariness - it's an aching of the soul. Even the groans get passed down.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Bed
Weariness
Aching
Emerge
Groans
Lair
Passed
Precisely
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In the early nineties, I was a cub reporter on a city newspaper in Limerick, and assigned to the courthouse there. One day, an old detective sergeant came and whispered to me in the press pit. He pointed out a young offender, a teenager who was up for stealing a car or something relatively minor, and said, 'See this kid? He'll kill.'
Kevin Barry / Writer
Kids
Car
Cities
Stealing
Teenager
Sergeant
Assigned
Courthouse
Cub
Detective
Reporter
Minor
Newspaper
Nineties
Offender
Relatively
Pit
Pointed
Press
Whispered
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And the view was suddenly clear to me. The world opened out to its grim beyonds and I realized that, at forty, one must learn the rigors of acceptance. Capitalize it: Acceptance. I needed to accept what was put before me--be it a watery grave in Ireland's only natural fjord, or a return to the city and its grayer intensities, or a wordless exile in some steaming Cambodian swamp hole, or poems or no poems, or children or not, lovers or not, illness or otherwise, success or its absence. I would accept all that was put in my way, from here on through until I breathed my last.
Kevin Barry / Writer
Acceptance
Children
Views
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Kevin Barry Quotes - Page 1

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