James Joyce

“I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.”

“Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.”

“I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.”

“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”

“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.”

“A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.”

“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

“Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.”

“A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.”

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”