We’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with quotes from Irish writers about the power of words:

If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way. – Seamus Heaney

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. – Oscar Wilde

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. – James Joyce

We read to know we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis

All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright. – William Butler Yeats, Where My Books Go