“It’s about what you’ve got to put yourself through to make anything worthwhile. It’s about going to the dark places and using what you find there.”

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“He sits in his tomb up top of the Newport hotel. It contains a crunchy armchair, a floppy bed, several arrogant spiders, a mattress with stains the shapes of planets and an existential crisis. But he wouldn’t want to sound too French about it.”

― Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

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“Never name the moment for happiness or it will pass by.”

―Download Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

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“He stops up—he’s had a stunning thought. Is there such a thing, he wants to know, as a positive crack-up? Where the mind breaks down and re-forms again but only to show the world more clearly than before. A mind left calm as a settled pool.”

― Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

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“No…I knew a Martin.

And was he wiley?

If there was one thing he wasn’t was wiley, John.

Oh?

Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces.

A ha’penny short?

Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them.

What kind of animals?

He’d sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they’d have been wind-bothered up that way.

They’d have been…

Bothered, John. By the wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle.

Unseat them?

Cornelius lowers his sad eyes –

In the mind.

You mean you’d have a cow’d take a turn?

Cornelius squares his jaw.

Do you realise you’re looking at a man who’s seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully.

On account of?

Wind coming easterly. That’s the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you’d get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn’t be right after it.”

―Download Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

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“He has a set of nerves on like a sack of fucking snakes.”

― Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

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“There is a show tonight in the Highwood, John. There will be all sorts of people to play music there. We must go tonight to the Highwood, john. we’ll breathe in the music and the cold-starred air.

*

And Cornelius has taken down the moon – hasn’t he? – with gleam-of-eye and giddying snout and his touch on the wheel is delicate as the spring, here a soft tip, there a glanced tap for each swerve of the road as it runs the country and turns.

Oh this is the knack of it – John can see clearly now – the carefree life, and he envies him the spring.

And before we know it, John? The summer proper will be in on top of us and the woods will be whispering.

Fuck the whispering woods, Cornelius. Just get me to my fucking island.

But he is snagged again; he turns helplessly.

How’d you mean, about the woods?

Cornelius beams –

There are things we can’t describe, he says.

Go on?

What we see around us is only at the ten per cent level, John.

Of?

The reality.

And what’s the leftover?

Unseen.

How’d you mean?

Well, he says. The way sometimes you’d walk across a field and a sense of elation would come over you. Are you with me?

Okay…

You’re half risen from the skin. the feet are not touching the stones. The little heart is about to hop out of your chest from the sheer fucken joy. And the strange thing about it?

Go on.

That patch of happiness could be floating around the field for the last ten years. Or for the last three hundred and fifty years. Out of love that was had there or a child that was playing or an old friend that was found again after a long time lost. Whatever it was, it caused a great happy feeling and it was left there in the field. You’re after walking into it. And for half a minute you’re lifted and soaring but then you’re out the far side again and back into your own poor stride and woes.

You’d find a sadness just the same?

Or an evil, John. Or a blackness. Or terror, John, or fucken terror, because there’s plenty of terror in the world. Always was and has been.

A soft whisper –

I mean take a look out the window.

A sweep of the arm for the greys and sea-greens of the moonful hills, the pale night as they pass by –

I mean why’d you think I’ve the fucken foot down, John?”

― Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

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