The Novel Does Not Simply Recount Experience,

Chance Is Better Than Choice; It Is More Lordly. Chance Is God, Choice Is Man.

To Walk Into History Is To Be Free At Once, To Be At Large Among People.

Sport And Death Are The Two Great Socializing Factors In Ireland.

Knowledge Of Rome Must Be Physical, Sweated Into The System, Worked Up Into The Brain Through The Thinning Shoe-leather. ... When It Comes To Knowing, The Senses Are More Honest Than The Intelligence. Nothing Is More Real Than The First Wall You Lean Up Against Sobbing With Exhaustion. Rome No More Than Beheld (that Is, Taken In Through The Eyes Only) Could Still Be A Masterpiece In Cardboard - The Eye I Suppose Being Of All The Organs The Most Easily Infatuated And Then Jaded And So Tricked. Seeing Is Pleasure, But Not Knowledge.

Never To Lie Is To Have No Lock On Your Door, You Are Never Wholly Alone.