Patrick Kavanagh

"With women in general he was truthful and sincere and would talk philosophy or Canon Law to them on the slightest provocation. Women cannot understand honesty in a man."

"The headlands and the hedges were so fresh and wonderful, so gay with the dawn of the world. Tarry never tired looking at these ordinary things as he tired of the Mass and of religion. In a dim way he…"

"'I was talking to one of the McArdles there and I was telling him that he ought to be getting a women. "Huh," says he, "what would I be doing with a woman? I have me pint and me fag," says he, "and I'…"

"They were both more than twenty-seven in those enthusiastic years of nineteen hundred and thirty-five, yet neither had as much as ever kissed a girl. Not that kissing was much in favour in that distri…"

"'Begod there's a powerful piece of turnips'"

"'I always say to these here, marry the first man that asks you. There's only three classes of men a woman should never marry - a delicate man, a drunken man, and a lazy man. I'm not so sure that the l…"

"In country places a single word is inflected to mean a hundred things, so that only a recording of the sounds gives an idea of the speech of these people."