And all those boys of Europe born in those times, and thereabouts those times, Russian, French, Belgian, Serbian, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Prussian, German, Austrian, Turkish – and Canadian, Australian, American, Zulu, Gurkha, Cossack, and all the rest – their fate was written in a ferocious chapter in the book of life, certainly. Those millions of mothers and their million gallons of mother’s milk, millions of instances of small talk and baby talk, beatings and kisses, ganseys and shoes, piled up in history in great ruined heaps, with a loud and broken music, human stories told for nothing, for ashes, for death’s amusement, flung on the mighty scrapheap of souls, all those million boys in all their humours to be milled by the millstones of a coming war.
Sebastian BarryBut I suspect the reported number of good novels this year is a result of 9/11 and all the other alarums of recent years. I think it set a certain gear into movement, unseen, silent, at the heart of many writers. Writers with children, writers with that hope of a peaceful century; a sort of literary battle stations. I was not surprised to hear Ali Smith describe her wonderful book The Accidental as a war book.
Sebastian Barry, in interview with TMO (2005)
Tag: 9-11 war-against-terror
There is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship.
Sebastian BarryA Ford motorcar is a magical thing in the night with the spraying lamps against the pitch road and the smell of metal and perfume under the clothy roof.
Sebastian BarryThat place where I was born was a cold town. Even the mountains stood away. They were not sure, no more than me, of that dark spot, those same mountains.
There was a black river that flowed through the town, and if it had no grace for mortal beings, it did for swans, and many swans resorted there, and even rode the river like some kind of plunging animal, in floods.
The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.
Sebastian BarryTag: life death philosophical birth thoughts
After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.
Sebastian BarryTag: happiness world happy beautiful
My own story, anyone's own story, is always told against me, even what I myself am writing here, because I have no heroic history to offer. There is no difficulty not of my own making.
Sebastian BarryNow yet again I discover I do not have the language, the lingo, to talk to her about this, or about anything. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach.
Sebastian BarryAs I do not seem able much to heal, then maybe I can simply be a responsible witness to the miracle of the ordinary soul.
Sebastian BarryPagina 1 di 7.
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