Dermot Healy > Quotes

“...and he suddenly opened his eyes and stared straight ahead into an empty space till slowly we returned into view. I can make small talk, he said slowly, I can do that but out of the corner of my eye I can see the dark approaching.”
― Dermot Healy, Long Time, No See

“Jesus. I had a dream last night too.
You had.
I dreamt that my Grandma had just died yesterday.
Dear God.
And she had died long before I was born.
He looked at me with astounded eyes, and felt his neck, and then he patted my knee. Aisy son, he said.
Why did I dream her?
Because you never met her. The dead you never met die a little bit every day in your head.”
― Dermot Healy, Long Time, No See

“Truth is the lie you once told returning to haunt you”
― Dermot Healy, The Bend for Home

“I make my way back whistling. Gerry nods towards Mrs Brady who is standing beside the trolleys.
Morning, Mrs Brady, I say cheerfully.
I push her provisions out to the car.
Things are something terrible, she says. You can't trust anybody.
No.
It's come to a sorry pass.
It has.
There's hormones in the beef and tranquillizers in the bacon. There's men with breasts and women with mickeys. All from eating meat.
Now.
I steer a path between a crowd of people while she keeps step alongside.
Can you believe it - they're feeding the pigs Valium. If you boil a bit of bacon you have to lie down afterwards. Dear oh dear.
Yes, I nod.
The thought of food makes me ill.
The pigs are getting depressed in those sheds. If they get depressed they lose weight. So they tranquillize them. Where will it end?
I don't know, Mrs Brady, I say. I begin filling the boot.
That's why I started buying lamb. Then along came Chernobyl. Now you can't even have lamb stew or you'll light up at night! I swear. And when they've left you with nothing safe to eat, next thing they come along and tell you you can't live in your own house.
I haven't heard of that one, Mrs Brady.
Listen to me. She took my elbow. It could all happen that you're in your own house and the next thing is there's radiation bubbling under the floorboards.
What?
It comes right at you through the foundations. Watch the yogurts. Did you hear of that?
No.
I saw it in the Champion. Did you not see it in the Champion?
I might have.
No wonder we're not right.
I brought the lid of the boot down. She sits into the car very decorously and snaps her bag open on her lap. She winds down the window and gives me 50p for myself and £1 for the trolley.”
― Dermot Healy, Sudden Times

“It's in a neighbor's house fiction begins.”
― Dermot Healy, The Bend For Home

“There is nothing more awkward to look at, said Joejoe, than peasants in suits. They don't fit into them.”
― Dermot Healy, Long Time, No See

“Der größte Fehler ist der, einen Mann ausschließlich als einen Mann zu behandeln oder eine Frau nur als eine Frau, denn sie alle haben Zugang zu vielen Rollen...”
― Dermot Healy, A Goat's Song

“He had forgotten. Even as he had observed people he was forgetting their very essence. Except perhaps that there was always the possibility that somewhere in the future the naming might begin. But at that moment in time he doubted it. A face returned perhaps, not a face but an expression, not an expression but perhaps a reading of that expression, not what was in the thing observed but in the observer.
The wrong thing named.
And suddenly he was swept by a terrible fear of years having gone by which were filled with wrong meanings. He had been wrong from the very beginning. He knew nothing of the world. It had passed him by. It had all happened in another room.”
― Dermot Healy, A Goat's Song

“Die größte Freude ist die, aus verschiedenen Sprachen auswählen zu können, was den Inhalt des Geistes am besten ausdrückt.”
― Dermot Healy, A Goat's Song