To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic.

— James Joyce

To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and color which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art.

— James Joyce

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odor of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

— James Joyce

Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.

— James Joyce

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

— James Joyce

What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way?

— James Joyce

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

— James Joyce

What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

— James Joyce

What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Died was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Died then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God always remained the same God and God's real name was God.

— James Joyce

Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

— James Joyce