So you would kill Old Ireland?” Anna Livia said. “You would kill yourself, for without Old Ireland, you wouldn’t be.

He returned her love. He lusted after her sweet young body. He wanted her the way he wanted to breathe the spring air. He had never loved anyone before. He had not known even what this feeling for his tiny slave was. Now in the crisp, clear spring sunlight, he knew.

It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you have written a great book, you will never publish anything. Great books happen by chance, not by design. The wise writer writes the best he can and leaves it to posterity to decide about greatness.

Too late for that now,” the Eldest Leprechaun said. “The damage is done. Give the thing a name, and it takes shape. They gave a name and a shape to the force that’s always hated us. It’s everything we’re not. It’s New Ireland, it’s money for money’s sake, brown paper envelopes stuffed full of bribes—the turn of mind that says that the old’s only good for theme parks, and the new is all there needs to be. It’s been getting stronger and stronger all this while.And now that it’s more important to the people living in the city than we are, it’s become physically real.