Turtle Was Gone A Long Time

'White-water rafting with John Moriarty down the canyons of the collective psyche, even those readers who don't fall off and drown will have their pre-conceptions and perceptions scoured to a dazzle. ...Rifling the philosophies and mysticisms of East and West for his idiosyncratic vocabulary, he confabulates a Christianity that has sprung from its Old Testament bindings and opened its pages to the visions of the shaman and the silences of the Buddha... this is not a treatise on myth or comparative religion; it is in itself a mythic and religious intervention. Even dissenters like myself can be profoundly grateful to John Moriarty, for he has gone farther down the backstairs to hell and up the front steps to heaven than most of us will ever dare to follow.'
- Tim Robinson, Irish Independent

'...an extraordinary book. He has journeyed back into our mystic past and discovered our buried undergrounds which sprout much of our day-to-day behaviour. It has to be savoured slowly and thoughtfully, and the reward is rich.'
- Alice Taylor, Sunday Tribune

'This is the log-book of an Irish Orpheus. ...Those who read this tale of the turtle will be grateful for the knowledge it brings and the propitiatory rites it enacts. ...John Moriarty, on Halloween night of our century, addresses the deepest anxieties of our seeking. Brother to dragons and companion to owls, he has opened his skull to "a new vision of what we are, a new experience of what we are, a new approach to what we are". For this can we be anything but grateful?'
- Mark Patrick Hederman

'...an extraordinary book, and is the pace is to be maintained... the work will become one of the thought classics.'
- Anne Lucey, Cork Examiner

'There is something magical here. His profound dialogue with all the great sages and writers whom you feel are within him. He has enlarged himself to contain it all. One feels the intensity of his knowing, the emotions, the soul, the rocks, the mountains, the seas.'
- Camilla O'Callaghan, Network Ireland