I suppose . . . in writing you can't have regrets. I mean, you just get it down the way it was . . . it's only wishful thinking that things could be other than they were.

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.

Love must not entreat, ' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.

Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair

His transcendent sense of worth had risen and caught up to him. He did not like the world he lived in, and the people in it. He was just as much a victim as he was a culprit of the seven deadly sins.

There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.

I don't care what other people think as long as I am happy. The day I die or retire, I have blown all my chances because I don't have the chance any more to change my image as an F1 driver.

... I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.

This letter is written on the skin of one of the water sprites who drowned your parents.' 'Ick!' I cried, and dropped the letter on the kitchen table.

I always talk about my characters like they're real people.

I start to crack at four hundred to one.