When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.

Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.

In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from.

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.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.

There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.