A child is never the author of his own history.

— Sebastian Barry

After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

— Sebastian Barry

And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of

— Sebastian Barry

And what else could we have come here for, except to sense these tiny victories? Not the big victories that crush and kill the victor. Not the wars and civil ructions, but the saving grace of a Hollandaise sauce that has escaped all the possibilities of culinary disaster and is being spread like a yellow prayer on a plump cod steak - victoriously.

— Sebastian Barry

And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.

— Sebastian Barry

Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.

— Sebastian Barry

But I had no idea what I looked like. Children may feel epic and large to themselves and yet be only scraps to view.

— Sebastian Barry

Clinton and his cigar was so much greater a man than Bush and his rifle.

— Sebastian Barry

Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too.

— Sebastian Barry

For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.

— Sebastian Barry