Patrick Kavanagh

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

Poetry is not Irish or any other nationality; and when writers such as Messrs. Clarke, Farren and the late F. R. Higgins pursue Irishness as a poetic end, they are merely exploiting incidental local colour.

Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination.

Natural life, lived naturally as it is lived in the countryside, has none of that progress which is the base of happiness. Men and women in rural communities can be compared to a spring that rises out of a rock and spreads in irregular ever-widening circles. But the general principle is static.

Ay - 'The Green Fool' business, the libel action over the head of it - did me a lot of damage. It destroyed the momentum.