The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Stephen Dedalus, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ch. 5 (1916).)

It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish.

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Stephen Daedalus, in Stephen Hero, ch. 17 (1944, revised 1975). In answer to Madden's attempts to convert him to Irish nationalism.)

What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self.

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Ulysses, ch. 15, "Circe," The Corrected Text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, Random House (1986). Stephen Dedalus's musings describe the essential literary plot for Joyce.)

Around us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending
Ache of love!

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish writer. On the Beach at Fontana (l. 9-12). . . Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. (1936) Oxford University Press.)

Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish writer. On the Beach at Fontana (l. 1-2). . . Oxford Book of Modern Verse, The, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. (1936) Oxford University Press.)

A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place.
?By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years.

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Ulysses, ch. 12, "Cyclops," The Corrected Text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, Random House (1986).)

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

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Cranly, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ch. 5 (1916).)

Of the dark past
A child is born
With joy and grief
My heart is torn

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish writer. Ecce Puer (l. 1-4). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house?
MTo seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Ulysses, ch. 16, "Eumaeus," The Corrected Text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, Random House (1986). Leopold Bloom in conversation with Stephen Dedalus.)

It was not only in Skeat that he found words for his treasure- house, he found them also at haphazard in the shops, on advertisements, in the mouths of the plodding public. He kept repeating them to himself till they lost all instantaneous meaning for him and became wonderful vocables.

(James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish author. Stephen Hero, episode 5, New Directions (1944). The passage refers to Stephen Daedalus of Joyce's unfinished first attempt at an autobiographical novel. Less than half the manuscript exists, and it was published only after Joyce's death. Skeat refers to Skeat's Etymological Dictionary.)