Hugo Hamilton Quotes
Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick . . . Read more

-Hugo Hamilton
People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the . . . Read more

-Hugo Hamilton
Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character.

-Hugo Hamilton
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One day, my father said there was nothing outside infinity. He said the universe was like a cardboard box with God sitting outside surrounded by light, but I wanted to know if maybe God was sitting inside another cardboard box with the light on, and how could anyone be sure how many c . . . Read more

-Hugo Hamilton
He said you have to be on the side of the losers, the people with bad lungs. You have to be with those who are homesick and can't breathe very well in Ireland. He said it makes no sense to hold a stone in your hand. A lot more people would be homeless if you speak the killer language. . . . Read more

-Hugo Hamilton
-Nobody can force you to smile, she says. -What? I ask. But I know she's not even talking to me, only to herself, as if she's the last person left in the room. -They can make you show your teeth, but what good is that? Nobody can make you smile against your will.

-Hugo Hamilton
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...Dead people have the best conversations of all. Lots of people don't really speak until they're dead, because only then can they say all the things to each other in the graveyard that they have been keeping a secret all their lives.

-Hugo Hamilton
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They speak like that because they're afraid of the Irish language coming back and killing everybody in the country this time. He [my father] says Irish people drink too much and talk too much and don't want to speak Irish, because it stinks of poverty and dead people left lying in the . . . Read more

-Hugo Hamilton