One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you. Joseph O'Neill More Quotes by Joseph O'Neill More Quotes From Joseph O'Neill I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeebling fatalism, a sense that the great outcomes were but randomly connected to our endeavors, that life was beyond mending, that love was loss, that nothing worth saying was sayable, that dullness was general, that disintegration was irresistible. Joseph O'Neill awful outcomes loss I certainly want to continue to write in a way that's intimate. I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer. Joseph O'Neill romance writing book We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. How, otherwise, to account for much of one's life? Joseph O'Neill wistfulness logic serious Who has the courage to set right those misperceptions that bring us love? Joseph O'Neill misperception Perhaps the relevant truth is that we all find ourselves in temporal currents and that unless you're paying attention you'll discover, often too late, that an undertow of weeks or of years has pulled you deep into trouble. Joseph O'Neill too-late attention years The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium. Joseph O'Neill mediums novel special If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it. Joseph O'Neill madness want writing Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway. Joseph O'Neill deception writing lying It won't be long before we'll be deafened by the screeches of whistles being blown by whistle-blowers blowing the whistle on themselves. Joseph O'Neill long You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable. Joseph O'Neill preoccupation want america I'm completely cricketed out. If I never have to write another word about cricket again, I'll be a happy man. Joseph O'Neill cricket writing men New York interposed itself, once and for all, between me and all other places of origin. Joseph O'Neill new-york I was just a boy on a boat in the universe. Joseph O'Neill boat universe boys I have been to Turkey almost every summer holiday of my life and pretty much only on summer holidays, which makes me a very shallow Turk indeed. Joseph O'Neill turkeys holiday summer Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day. Joseph O'Neill manhattan sky night Publication is almost certainly a punishment for having written a book. Joseph O'Neill publication punishment book It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship. It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S., it involved singing lots of songs about how you were never going to set foot in Ireland again. Joseph O'Neill journey song goodbye I think you sense the metaphorical resonance of what you're writing without analysing it too carefully. That leads you down dead ends. You stop imagining things and start writing towards these themes. Joseph O'Neill dead down think you I think if you're writing about cricket, you're obviously writing about power, because cricket is such a loaded sport, much more so than soccer. Joseph O'Neill think you cricket power There may well be writers who roll up their sleeves and say, 'I'm going to write a post-9/11 novel' but I wasn't one of those. Joseph O'Neill going well say who
