Frank Delaney Quotes & Sayings

Marriage is very important. Marrying a girl is the most important thing a man can do. Never mind business or politics or sport or any of that, there's nothing so vital to the world as a man marrying a woman. That's where we get our children from, that's how the human race goes forward. And if it's too late for children, there's the companionship of a safe and trusted person. — Frank Delaney

Definition of remorse: a mourning that is out of control and never ends, that can strike out of the bluest of skies, across the softest of snows. — Frank Delaney

Every pain is a lesson. — Frank Delaney

Stories are where you go to look for the truth of your own life. — Frank Delaney

We do well to remember dolphins. If a dolphin ails, then others come alongside and nudge him gently through the waters; because a dolphin must keep moving in order to keep breathing. We all have need of our dolphins alongside us from time to time. — Frank Delaney

'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, remains the most perfect novel that has ever come out of the United States. Everything in the book moves as it should, in the manner of a piece by Bach or Mozart. — Frank Delaney

If you have a book, you have a friend. — Frank Delaney

the Devil became desperate to get away. His way was blocked, so he bit a big chunk out of the mountaintop and carried it off in his mouth. Patrick, stunned at the size of the hole in the mountain, hesitated for a moment, and lost his advantage. By the time he looked up, the Devil had gone too far ahead to be caught. Patrick gave up the chase. Up ahead, at Cashel, the Devil stopped for a rest, and he dropped the stone out of his mouth. That stone became the Rock of Cashel, the most famous sight in Ireland. — Frank Delaney

Writers have opinions - that, in part, is why they write. Therefore they have strong likes and dislikes. — Frank Delaney

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge. — Frank Delaney

The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story-not just as Irish people but as flesh and blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it-that's what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from. — Frank Delaney

There's always good news wrapped up in bad news. — Frank Delaney

But can you make someone feel the world all around loves them? Can you make them feel the rain is for cooling them, the wind is for drying them, the sun is for warming them? — Frank Delaney

I'd have to struggle to find a subject in which I can't get some kind of interested pulse started. — Frank Delaney

Stick a lighted candle up your backside to give yourself that inner glow. — Frank Delaney

Storytelling, in print or speech, needs vital energy. — Frank Delaney

It's very healing,' he said, 'to tell yourself your own story as though you were reciting a myth. — Frank Delaney

As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way. — Frank Delaney

Can you lead to dignity a man abused by his employer? Can you give hope for a new life to a woman whose infant has died? Can you guide an oppressed people to freedom and power? — Frank Delaney

Patrick had left behind some writings, and one of his most famous works was something many of us learned in school called "Saint Patrick's Breastplate," a kind of a cross between a hymn and a poem. — Frank Delaney

To have come from Ireland no matter how long ago is to be of Ireland in some part forever. — Frank Delaney

A gust of wind snatched at her hat. She jumped from the wall and her skirts blew everywhere. I couldn't avoid glimpsing more than she intended, and I feared that she might have been embarrassed. Instead she laughed and said, "You're seeing my true colors," and I was the one who blushed. — Frank Delaney

The point about words is - the better you use them, the stronger is the thought that wears them. — Frank Delaney

Kitchens are for conversation. They're not just for cooking; they're for conversations. — Frank Delaney

What are you like inside? Don't you have feelings where you love everyone, and at the same time you hate everyone? Or - don't you have times when everything goes the way you want, but nothing feels good or right? That's what I mean," he'd say, "about my black horse and my white horse. — Frank Delaney

First a piece of Irish wisdom: you should always listen to a bookie. For they have a saying, 'Money tells a good story,' and somewhere in their odds is a kind of science-fiction existentialism that decrees that we, the people, know everything. In other words, betting patterns often make for good, unconscious soothsaying. — Frank Delaney

We all belong to an ancient identity. Stories are the rivers that take us there. — Frank Delaney

I suppose if you've always been wrapped in wool, you don't know it's wool. — Frank Delaney

We had so many of those meaningless banter phrases, those icebreakers ... they were meaningless-but without malice of harm, and they helped awkward people get over their embarrassment at being alive. — Frank Delaney

Tonight, I'm certainly going to tell you a story, but 'tis a story with a difference because, unlike virtually every other tale I tell-in this case, I was there. And yet I know that although I was there, and I saw people who were real, they have since become somewhat imagined-because I now view them through my memory. That's something every human being does-but storytellers live by it. — Frank Delaney

Getting up, going to bed, preparing food, eating food
we futile creatures must struggle all the time. Nothing that we need comes to us; we must reach for everything. — Frank Delaney

Should; shouldn't; ought; oughtn't - the enemies of contentment. — Frank Delaney

I believe the world of the spirit is in general greatly neglected and not at all served by the practice of faith as we know it, because religion isn't individual enough. — Frank Delaney

I write - and then I write some more. — Frank Delaney

When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man. — Frank Delaney

The human face does not always reflect the beauty that may repose in the soul. — Frank Delaney

Start with the difficult and when it gets easy, everything else is easier. — Frank Delaney

If you ever want to understand multitasking in prose, James Joyce is your man. — Frank Delaney

Any attempt to ease guilt by justification is false. That the crimes of another appease none of one's own offenses. That, if one is being truthful, the greater pain is that of the offender. I know now that I would much rather be a victim of violence than a perpetrator — Frank Delaney

Fair is a body pigment, that's all it is. — Frank Delaney

For a startling period of my life, I reported the Troubles in Ireland for the BBC. I lived in Dublin and was called out to all sorts of incidents that, if taken together, add up to a war - bombings, assassinations, riots, shootings, robberies, jailbreaks, kidnappings, and sieges. — Frank Delaney

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"The wises men tell us that everything, sooner or later, changes. And all change commences with a specific moment. We say to ourselves, "I wont do this again, I must become different." And we succeed
eventually. — Frank Delaney

There are some places you love with your heart, and there are some places that you love with your mind- the places that you love with both are called 'libraries' — Frank Delaney

that's the story of how Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland forever and banished the Devil to England. Some people say that explains why there has always been such trouble between England and Ireland. The Devil stirs it up. — Frank Delaney

Do you know what the difference is between Friendship and Love? Friendship is the photograph, Love is the oil painting. — Frank Delaney

...habit of speaking in paragraphs. — Frank Delaney

To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities. — Frank Delaney

Marriage is the gold standard of all relationships. It's the currency by which everything is valued. — Frank Delaney

I told you that day: a pair of idiots. I thought she was leading you around by the nose
or some other organ. — Frank Delaney

Beneath its broad surface, storytelling should always work hard to say more than it seems to. — Frank Delaney

The difference between a friend and an enemy is friendliness. — Frank Delaney

I never met a librarian worth his or her salt who didn't perceive my passion for books. — Frank Delaney

If you need proof of how the oral relates to the written, consider that many great novelists, including Joyce and Hemingway, never submitted a piece of work without reading it aloud. — Frank Delaney

We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas
stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the "story" part of the word "history," and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence. — Frank Delaney

What I told you tonight - it isn't my story alone. It belongs to every Irish person living and dead. And every Irish person living and dead belongs to it. And to all the story of Ireland; blood and bones, legends, guns and dreams, Catholics, Protestants, England, horses and poets and lovers. — Frank Delaney

Find your soul and you'll live. Lose your soul and you'll die. — Frank Delaney

A thing doesn't have to be true, he said, for a person to get joy out of it. What it has to be is not evil or malicious. — Frank Delaney