If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.

I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety.

There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line.

I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.

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.