The terror and hurt in my story happened because when I was young I thought others were the authors of my fortune or misfortune; I did not know that a person could hold up a wall made of imaginary bricks and mortar against the horrors and cruel, dark tricks of time that assail us, and be the author therefore of themselves.


He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet like all of us.


Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture