"It's practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude: the stifling and consolations of community. Also, the consolations of solitude."

--

Source : "Derek Mahon, The Art of Poetry No. 82". Interview with Eamonn Grennan, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 2000.

Derek Mahon

#Community Quotes #Solitude Quotes #Weirdness Quotes

“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove.”
“How strange and abandoned and unsettled I am. Like a snowdome paper weight that's been shaken. There's a blizzard in my bubble. Everything in my world that was steady and sure and sturdy has been shaken out of place, and it's now drifting and swirling back down in a confetti of debris. (p30)”
“What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.”
“I was born the day I got my license. When I was a kid, if I wanted to go somewhere and see things, you have to get in your car and actually go.”
“I have always been skeptical of medical orthodoxies, because sooner, rather than later, so many of them are turned on their heads. Or, put another way, providing you are prepared to wait it out, what was adjudged bad for you yesterday is likely to prove beneficial today.”
“Working hard becomes a habit, a serious kind of fun.”
“I wanted to build something that was a system - that was mechanical and would propagate itself like a virus. I needed a way for it spread from person to person, and the best way to do that was trying to get someone to get their friends to sign up.”
“Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.”

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