Through engagement with others, literature lets us imagine what it would be like to be differe.
There is no good reason to suppose that whatever can be felt can be expressed in words, or indeed in any articulate form.
The camera has an interest in turning history into spectacle, but none in reversing the process. At best, the picture leaves a vague blur in the observer's mind; strong enough to send him into battle perhaps, but not to have him understand why he is going.
A critical discourse that had respect for the mystery of art would look to the sense of life which finds expression in paradox, metaphor, tautology, and syntax.
The truth of art consists in its power to break the monopoly that those in power exercise by defining what is real.
If there is a distinctive Irish experience, it is one of division, exacerbated by the fact that division in a country so small seems perverse. But the scale doesn't matter.
Knowing that language has done so much, we want to believe that it can do everything.
