James Joyce

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

Resignation is the timid sign of courage.

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.

I am tomorrow or some future day what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

The Irish are people who will never have leaders, for at the great moment they always desert them. They have produced one skeleton--Parnell--never a man.

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.

My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.

There is not past no future everything flows in an eternal present.

Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

As you are now so once were we.

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

Shut your eyes and see.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

There's no friends like the old friends.

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

Do you know what Ireland is? Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.

Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.

The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation whether in vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

Redheaded women buck like goats.

Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.

And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.

A man of genius makes no mistakes his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flown at it to hold it back from flight.

For myself I always write about Dublin because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

Nations have their ego, just like individuals.

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.

If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.

White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak.

Think youre escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.

My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.

A nation is the same people living in the same place.

Love...is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself.

It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.