For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.

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.

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.

I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts.