1. "For the girls the regular comings and goings restored their superior sense of self, a superiority they had received intact from Moran and which was little acknowledged by the wide world in which they had to work and live. That unexplained notion of superiority was often badly shaken and in need of restoration by the time they came home.”

   1. John McGahern, Amongst Women

   2. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

   3. Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls

   4. Samuel Beckett, Molloy

2. “Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

   1. Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

   2. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

   3. Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

   4. Colm Tóibín, The Master

3. “And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. ”

   1. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

   2. Samuel Beckett, Murphy

   3. Samuel Beckett, Molloy

   4. Sebastian Barry, Annie Dunne

4. “Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the centre - that centre which she coveted for herself and recognised instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact. ”

   1. Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn

   2. Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls

   3. Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz

   4. Cecilia Aherne, PS, I Love You

5. “I remember I wanted to get away; I wanted to run. I couldn't stand any more. But I didn't want to run. I wanted everything to be perfect; everything was going to be great - I just had to be careful. I was responsible for it all. The clouds coming, I was dragging them towards us; my thoughts were doing it. I was ruining everything. It was up to me. I could control the whole day. All I had to do was make sure that I made no stupid mistakes. Don't walk on the cracks. Don't look at the clouds. It's up to you.”

   1. Roddy Doyle, The Van

   2. Roddy Doyle, The Commitments

   3. Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

   4. Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

6. "History is such a romantic place, with its jarveys and urchins and side-buttoned boots. If it would just stay still, I think, and settle down. If it would just stop sliding around in my head.”

   1. Edna O'Brien, Johnny I Hardly Knew You

   2. Jennifer Johnston, How Many Miles to Babylon?

   3. Joseph O'Connor, Redemption Falls

   4. Anne Enright, The Gathering

7. “His consolation was that at least he had known her as the world had not, and the pain of living without her was no more than a penalty he paid for the privilege of having been young with her. What once was life, he thought, is always life and he knew that her image would preside in his intellect as a sort of measure and standard of brightness and repose.”

   1. Colm Tóibín, The Master

   2. Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way

   3. James Joyce, Ulysses

   4. John Banville, The Sea

8. "Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined,that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.”

   1. Anne Enright, Taking Pictures

   2. Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

   3. Colm McCann, TransAtlantic

   4. Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

9. "Ha you’re tickling. Don’t do please. Come on says he come on time to go to bed. Time for us to be out of this fet air. Where we going? Come on o human child. I singing oky ho-ky do-ky. Ha ha help me down from this wet earth. I’ll come. I’ll. Now I’ll come with you. "

   1. Samuel Beckett, Dream of Fair to Middling Women

   2. Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

   3. Paul Murray, An Evening of Long Goodbyes

   4. Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

10. “That place where I was born was a cold town. Even the mountains stood away. They were not sure, no more than me, of that dark spot, those same mountains. There was a black river that flowed through the town, and if it had no grace for mortal beings, it did for swans, and many swans resorted there, and even rode the river like some kind of plunging animal, in floods. ”

    1. Seamus Heaney, Wintering Out

    2. Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

    3. John Banville, The Book of Evidence

    4. Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Solutions

1:A, 2:B, 3:C, 4:B, 5:C, 6:D, 7:A, 8:D, 9:D, 10:B

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   "Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

2. 4 and above.

   "Mistakes are the portals of discovery."

3. 7 and above.

   "His heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."