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Jamie ONeill Quotes

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.

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
Horse, Four, Way
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

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
Morning, Boys, Capacity To Love
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

If you carry the weather with you, then character is determined by the prevailing wind

Jamie O'Neill
Character, Wind, Weather
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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
War, Lying, Rain

He slept that night thinking of loves and lighthouses. That one love might shine to bring all loves home.

Jamie O'Neill
Love, Home, Night
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel”, p.387, Simon and Schuster

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
Book, Reading, Thinking
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel”, p.431, Simon and Schuster

It was far too absurd to die of a Tuesday

Jamie O'Neill
Tuesday, Absurd, Dies
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel”, p.458, Simon and Schuster

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
Humorous, Men, Doors
Jamie O'Neill (2002). “At Swim, Two Boys”, p.401, Simon and Schuster

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