I want to reveal in a simple way the usual - and unusual - life of the city; the corporation workman, the busmen, policemen, the civil servants, the theatres, Moore Street and also, what occupies so large a place in Dublin's life, the literary and artistic.

Patrick Kavanagh

Categorized in : City Street Life Simple

On the stem of memory imaginations blossom.

Patrick Kavanagh

imagination mind memories

We are not alone in our loneliness, others have been here and known griefs we thought our special own.

Patrick Kavanagh

grief loneliness special

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -

Patrick Kavanagh

hate kings past

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.

Patrick Kavanagh

policemen understood art

God cannot catch us. Unless we stay in the unconscious room. Of our hearts.

Patrick Kavanagh

faith heart rooms

My chin is weak. I find it hard to make decisions. For years I had been caught between the two stools of security on the land and rich-scented life on the exotic islands of literature.

Patrick Kavanagh

light islands beautiful

It often occurs to me that we love most what makes us miserable. In my opinion the damned are damned because they enjoy being damned.

Patrick Kavanagh

miserable enjoy opinion

A sweeping statement is the only statement worth listening to. The critic without faith gives balanced opinions, usually about second-rate writers.

Patrick Kavanagh

opinion listening giving

Macmillan's rejection had left him very downcast... Patrick Swift was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published.

Patrick Kavanagh

invited rejection should

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.

Patrick Kavanagh

originality good-man men

I dabbled in verse and it became my life

Patrick Kavanagh

verses

It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities - life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.

Patrick Kavanagh

curiosity enthusiasm reality

Malice is only another name for mediocrity.

Patrick Kavanagh

malice mediocrity names

What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.

Patrick Kavanagh

newspapers

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

Patrick Kavanagh

sticks expression men

Publication there [in Nimbus] was to prove a turning point… The publication of his next volume of verse, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, was to be directly linked to the mini-collection in Nimbus, and his Collected Poems (1964)

Patrick Kavanagh

kitties next volume

Natural life, lived naturally as it is lived in the countryside, has none of that progress which is the base of happiness. Men and women in rural communities can be compared to a spring that rises out of a rock and spreads in irregular ever-widening circles. But the general principle is static.

Patrick Kavanagh

women happiness men life

It might be said that the pose of absolute honesty is the most dishonest one of all.

Patrick Kavanagh

honesty-is pose honesty said

Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination.

Patrick Kavanagh

women alcohol imagination song

Undoubtedly, there are a number of well-developed, mainly female, stars helping Miss Taylor to hold the film industry together: Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, etc. But such an insistence on cheesecake smells of bankruptcy.

Patrick Kavanagh

miss film stars together