To be able to have the space to sit down and write has always been my central policy.

I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.

Having kids is very difficult to do on your own, and it's really crazy difficult to think you're doing it as a team and to find out that you're not actually part of a team.

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

I think you know everything at eight. But is is hidden from you, sealed up, in a way you have to cut yourself open to find.