J.P. Donleavy Quotes & Sayings

If you're going to love somebody, love somebody who needs it. — J.P. Donleavy

I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own. — J.P. Donleavy

Some day you'll show up when I'm back where I belong in this world. When I have what I ought to have. My due. And when you do. My gamekeepers will drive you out and away for good. Out. Away. Out. — J.P. Donleavy

Take deeds
Away.
Play music
please. — J.P. Donleavy

She thought too that women didn't know what to do with themselves these days which could turn them into harridans. Hardly a female friend she knew wasn't miserable. Either mind dumb with children, or in the married condition married to an earnest toiler, or lonely unmarried in their successful career. — J.P. Donleavy

Revenge is what I want. Nothing but pure unadulterated revenge. But my mother brought me up to be a lady. — J.P. Donleavy

This Boston voice squeaking out its song. The yellow light goes out the window on the stubs of windy grass and black rocks. And down the wet steps by gorse stumps and rusty heather to the high water mark and diving pool. Where the seaweeds rise and fall at night in Balscaddoon Bay. — J.P. Donleavy

The sun of Sunday morning up out of the sleepless sea from black Liverpool. Sitting on the rocks over the water with a jug of coffee. Down there along the harbor pier, trippers in bright colors. Sails moving out to sea. Young couples climbing the Balscaddoon Road to the top of Kilrock to search out grass and lie between the furze. A cold green sea breaking whitely along the granite coast. A day on which all things are born, like uncovered stars. — J.P. Donleavy

I remember one letter from a girl in a midwestern town who read one of my books and thought she had discovered it- that no one had ever read it or knew about it. Then one day in her local library she found cards for one or two of my other books. They were full of names- the books were borrowed all the time. She resented this a bit and then walked around the town looking in everybody's face and wondering if they were the ones who were reading my books. That is someone I write for. — J.P. Donleavy

Sometimes you write and you find yourself almost wondering how it will turn out. I don't think every writer sort of almost admits that at some stage his books can take on their own kind of life it selves and simply lead away into directions that they're not kind of prepared for. — J.P. Donleavy

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth. — J.P. Donleavy

I'm starved for love. Not ordinary love but real love. The love that's like music or something. — J.P. Donleavy

Come here till I tell you. Where is the sea high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling. — J.P. Donleavy

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money. — J.P. Donleavy

The best book of the year, Grobel's writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Huston's great films. — J.P. Donleavy

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. — J.P. Donleavy

The purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead with shame. — J.P. Donleavy

The inhabitants will always see both sides of an argument so long as it can result in a fight. — J.P. Donleavy

When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read. — J.P. Donleavy

I'm all for Christianity, but insolence must be put down. — J.P. Donleavy

And no. I must not go on thinking. For the pain will never go away. You just go on and live. In the dust of desertion. Still falling where last I loved. — J.P. Donleavy

Rid the mind of knowledge when looking for pleasure. Or start thinking and find a lot of pain. — J.P. Donleavy

You know, there must be happiness somewhere, when a lawyer dies. — J.P. Donleavy

If there's a sickness in America, it's the lack of materialism. — J.P. Donleavy

Dear Mr Skully, I have caught my neck in a mangle and will be indisposed for eternity. Yours in death S.D. — J.P. Donleavy

I'm sick of people. The less I have to do with them for the rest of my life the better. I don't careif I die. — J.P. Donleavy

And Mary, what of other men? There are no other men because my heart has gone out to you. And if you don't laugh I'll tell you what i think. I won't laugh. I think it's a fine instrument that God made for the poor likes of us to enjoy. — J.P. Donleavy

Blessed are they who in this sea of frailty,
climb aboard a piece of ass as it floats by. — J.P. Donleavy

Not using that handy maxim a man is what he makes his dough at and alas how much. Sometimes it is a gentle gesture to remind people of their big time possibilities. Makes them like you. — J.P. Donleavy

See all the women seated, youth in their face lifts, old age in their hands. — J.P. Donleavy

To marry the Irish is to look for poverty. — J.P. Donleavy

The only slight disconcertance being that in the middle of looking at a paintings [in the Museum of Modern Art] she always found herself desperately needing to take a pee. And grandmother's voice in her ear.
'My dear, if you really have to, only clean, very clean rest rooms will do. — J.P. Donleavy

Writing: Turning one's worst moments into profit. — J.P. Donleavy

But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death. — J.P. Donleavy

Electronic books are a bad thing because they cannot be accumulated on shelves to remind you of your past, to impress your neighbors and colleagues, and to help prevent divorces thanks to the sheer bother of arguing over who owns what. — J.P. Donleavy

... With a slight miscalculated leap cleared to the iron picket fence. Put the fear of God into me, picket fences and balls don't mix. — J.P. Donleavy

Expect the worst
And that's what
You'll get
Only it will be
Much worse. — J.P. Donleavy

On Being Old. It's not nice but take comfort that you won't stay that way for ever. — J.P. Donleavy

Writing is turning life's worst moments into money. — J.P. Donleavy

Food Throwers: Begun usually by estranged couples, once this victual flinging starts, everyone will do it ... Should your dinner party have become an out of control concussion match with opponents catapulting croutons and petits pois across the mahogany, don't fight it, go with it. And when you have the desire to quell the uprising approach the original perpetrator from behind. There, slowly crown her with the contents of the fresh fruit salad bowl. But be warned. Although this immobilizes and rivits everyone's attention it also gives them new ideas. — J.P. Donleavy

At the age of 18 I don't think that I thought very differently than I did at the age of 25. I think we instinctively have the knowledge and adapt the knowledge we need. — J.P. Donleavy

How when one is able to indulge the luxury of beginning one's life again.
All one thinks
To do
Is end it — J.P. Donleavy