Ellen Leemann

“Children play at being great and wonderful people, at the ambitions they will put away for one reason or another before they grow into ordinary men and women. Mankind as a whole had a like dream once; everybody and nobody built up the dream bit by bit, and the ancient story-tellers are there to make us remember what mankind would have been like, had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels. The Fianna and their like are themselves so full of power, and they are set in a world so fluctuating and dream-like, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires."
from a preface to
Gods and Fighting Men
by Lady Augusta Gregory”
― William Butler Yeats

“If the past year were offered me again,
And choice of good and ill before me set
Would I accept the pleasure with the pain
Or dare to wish that we had never met?”
― Augusta Gregory

“Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.”
― W.H. Auden

“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses