As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery.

My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'

When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.

We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.

I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.

The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.

When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

Somebody had said how only 15 paisa of the one rupee sent from the Centre reached the intended beneficiaries. The job of a leader isn't just to diagnose the disease but to treat it

One loss is good for the soul. Too many losses are not good for the coach.

Boredom is usually what spurs either bad decisions or any decision at all.

The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

We're highly adaptable and have developed some powerful systems of representation.

We were screwed and he didn't even kiss us first.

The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals.

Life is like that. Some days are diamonds and some days are stones.

To me art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete... with Dada I also have in common a certain mistrust towards power. We don't like authority, we don't like power.

One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one's own version is inaccurate — disgusting behavior!