James Joyce:
“Dubliners, strictly speaking, are my fellow-countrymen, but I don’t care to speak of our ‘dear dirty Dublin’ as they do. Dubliners are the most hopeless, useless and inconsistent race of charlatans I have ever come across, on the island or the continent. This is why the English Parliament is full of the greatest windbags in the world.
The Dubliner passes his time gabbing and making the rounds in bars or taverns or cathouses, without ever getting ‘fed up’ with the double doses of whiskey and Home Rule, and at night, when he can hold no more and is swollen up with poison like a toad, he staggers from the side-door and, guided by an instinctive desire for stability along the straight line of the houses, he goes slithering his backside against all walls and corners. He goes ‘arsing along’ as we say in English. There’s the Dubliner for you.”
