Patrick McCabe > Quotes

“All the beautiful things in this world are lies. They count for nothing in the end.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“Oh now now he says that's all over you must forget all about that next week your solitary finishes how about that hmm? I felt like laughing in his face: How can your solitary finish? That's the best laugh yet.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“You'll have to learn to forgive," he said. "For if you don't, you know what will happen?"
"What, Doctor?" I croaked, for my outburst had exhausted me.
"It will destroy you," he said as he handed me the tea.
A tear came into my eye when he said it for I knew it was true and I would have loved to be able to do it (not because of its destroying me but because it was right, and deep down I knew that) but I couldn't and the more I thought of it the more the blood came coursing to my head so that whenever I'd write I'd find myself clutching the pencil so tight I broke the lead how many times I don't know, hundreds.”
― Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto

“I don`t know if he was English but he spoke like it. He said good afternoon when everybody else said hardy weather or she looks like rain.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“When I am at my work each day
In the fields so fresh and green
I often think of riches and the way things might have been
But believe me when I tell you when I get home each day
I'm as happy as a sandboy with my wee cup of tay”
― Patrick McCabe, The Dead School

“Although I'm afraid I don't get too many clients these days!”
― Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto

“Hello there dandelions, fuck off! Chop go the heads with a cut of the stick excuse me just what do you think you're doing clip clip chop chop aaargh! what the fuck is going on where's our heads? Hee-yup!, I said and away again.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“All of a sudden I looked at him with his rosy cheeks and the two silver snots at his nose and what did I want to do I wanted to kiss him. Not the way Tiddly did it any of that but just because all of a sudden everything seemed so good. I said to myself: Just being here is so good I could stand here for ever.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“I wanted to stop talking about the whole thing. I wanted to talk about the hide and the old days and hacking at the ice and whose turn it was to toss the marble and all that, that was what I wanted to talk about. They were the best days, you could see through them days, as clear as polished glass. But Joe didn't want to.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“His eyes begged: ‘Could you love me?’ Well, I could – but I had a lot of things on hand and it really would have to wait.”
― Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto

“There he is - gone! as they say in Tyreelin”
― Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto

“Bye Bye , Father,' I said as the confessional door clicked shut behind me, 'Ah's' eyes following me, wondering, I suppose, what He'd been drinking the day he went and made a twilight zone of a disaster like me.”
― Patrick McCabe

“Mary had the same face as ma used to have sitting staring into the ashes it was funny that face it slowly grew over the other one until one day you looked and the person you knew was gone. And instead there was a half-ghost sitting there who had only one thing to say: All the beautiful things of this world are lies. They count for nothing in the end.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“Све дивне ствари на свету су лаж. И на крају ништа не вреде.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“Ah I see, says Father Dom with his two thumbs like dwarfs doing an old-time waltz in and out of his little black buttons.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“she said and gives me this look you’d think she was dying for a shite but was holding it in.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“who did I meet only Mrs Connolly with a grin swinging between her ears like a skipping rope.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent.”
― Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“I’m afraid the truth is you’re putting yourself in for plenty of disappointment if you expect people to hang around for very long in this life!”
― Patrick McCabe