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 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.

I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.

Sometimes I will spend two or three days not speaking to anyone outside of the immediate family when they come home, and then I find that I've been emailing like fury. Once you give in to that silence, it's quite nice.

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.

People do not change, they are merely revealed.

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.