Tuesday, October 7, 2008






"New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment...a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat."

- Brendan Behan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I never thought of the great Mr. Behan as a quester after spiritual refreshment. Spirituous, perhaps. Nor had I thought of Dublin as overrun by wild goats. Do the pharmacies carry repellents?

By the way, Edith Wharton speaks of New York as goat-infested in its Age of Innocence: " She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries, the one-story saloons, the wooden green-houses in ragged gardens, and the rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before the advance of residences as stately as her own... " This in the then "inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park."

How fortunate for Brendan Behan that the mansions had driven out the goats by his day!