"Out in the fields with only imagination for company, I would pretend the patches of weeds were rebels and I was the vengeful dictatorship mopping up any resistance."

"As for Finnegan’s Wake, with an introduction by an eminent scholar that admits the book is “unreadable”, I lasted precisely four pages. Once again I was fooling myself."

"You know the vibe. Pretty much any southern European city has an Old Town. Narrow streets, cobbley-pavey surfaces that are there a good while and not trying to evoke anything, architecturally speaking."

It’s like it was during the Emergency. But with bananas and clothes, that fit

I had school trousers that simply had to wait for a long enough school break before being washed

Because sustainability is so often tied up with ‘the right thing to do’ that we forget that some ‘sustainable’ stuff is only accessible with cash

"If there’s one thing that’s surer than a heatwave, it’s that the Leaving Cert will be marked by a vast army of people pontificating about it"

I think we should all be taught how to dance. Not as children but as adults - if nothing else it’s something to do on a night out when you don’t want to drink. 

It is estimated that 103% of the Irish population have claimed to have spent summers on the bog (the same percentage incidentally who claim studying Peig put them off Irish)

"I don’t want to inhibit their sense of adventure with my physical caution. I suppose it’s my job to keep them safe."