If you reject family – which a mother holds together – as well as the ties of Church and State, is there anything left for you?

More from Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (1965)

• Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.
• If the world is to be improved it must be by the exercise of individual charity.
• Men are influenced by big loud empty words, styes which swell the eyelids and impede vision of the truth.
• ‘But you like her, don’t you?’ asked Howarth. ‘You like Mrs Connor?’ For himself, thought Howarth, he did not particularly like Mrs Connor. He desired Mrs Connor, however.
• Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy.
• Howarth began to see that, however much it was against one’s will and convictions, sides had to be taken, the dreary corrupt world of politics had to be entered by the good and dispassionate, to protect and avenge the weak. But one always entered too late.