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

I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

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.

We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing; we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch.

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised

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

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