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.

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.'

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.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.

How easy it is for us to demonise from a distance. But when we stand face to face with our supposed enemy, it is hard to hate.

Learn to accept life in toto. A perfect life is only in the dream world. This, my dear, with all it's heartaches, is it. Our world.

Your assignment from God is not to change your husband, but to love, follow, assist, and minister to him.

You can never hurt anyone without hurting yourself.

Bjork is a very original, interesting person. I like her very much.

Is there a point of taxation wherein even a Democrat would acknowledge it is thievery by the government?

For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.

Nature, as we know her, is no saint.... She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

Sometimes the greatest tests of our strength are situations that don't seem so obviously dangerous. Sometimes surviving is the hardest thing of all.