Joseph O'Connor

How the prisoner and the immigrant are treated by the government, how the poor are treated and those without influence: this is secretly how the government would like to treat us all.

...but as his father used to say when he had a few drinks taken, you couldn't expect bloody miracles when you were talking about God.

That each man is the sum of his choices is nothing less than the truth. And each, perhaps, is also something else.

Love and freedom are such hideous words. So many cruelties have been done in their name.

We still tell each other that we are lucky to be alive, when our being alive has almost nothing to do with luck, but with geography, pigmentation, and international exchange rates.

Everything is in the way the material is composed.