“ We are the rocks and reefs of the human sea, tumultuous outcrops, magnets for wrecks. The peaks of mountains you cannot see: that's us, all right. Dark even on the brightest day. Stony and defiant of… Brian Doyle
“ Well the sky always seemed like another ocean to me, you know? Like we live between two incredible oceans, and we'll never get to the bottom of either of them. Brian Doyle
“ If everything must be burned I will do the burning and so I will not be burnt but be the fire. Everything I ever loved burned and so I will be the burning. There is nothing but that must which be burn… Brian Doyle
“ Maturity turns out to be a question you can never answer with confidence, despite advanced age and wage. Brian Doyle
“ Maybe we guzzle forty stories with every breath we draw and they soak into us and flavor and thicken and spice the wild stew we are. Brian Doyle
“ She'll be a fierce woman, that one. It'll take a hell of a man to love her right. Be like living with a thunderstorm. Same as her mother. A fierce woman. Force of nature. The kind of woman you just ha… Brian Doyle
“ But if we do not dream, then I think perhaps we are misusing our heads. They are not on our shoulders only to be farms for hair. Brian Doyle
“ Brian Doyle about the Irish custom of “taking to the bed.” He says “In Irish culture, taking to the bed with a gray heart is not considered especially odd. People did and do it for understandable reas… Brian Doyle
“ He claimed he had read the book so many times that the words had fallen out of it and the pages were all blank so he had to read the book to put the words back in or the book would be forlorn and nake… Brian Doyle
“ ...people would tell you much more than you expected to if you were generically presentable and left silence next to them like a friendly stranger; it was like they were waiting for some friendly sile… Brian Doyle
“ There are some silences that are so huge, and fraught, and haunted, and weighed, and shocked, that they just are; there's nothing you can say about them that makes any sense. All you can do is witness… Brian Doyle
“ The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress an… Brian Doyle
