Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.

I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead

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

No woman that I know is capable of leaving her child down for thirty seconds. She can't walk away without making sure that everything is absolutely as secure and safe for her child as can be.

I am interested in silences

There are about as many ways to be dead as there are to be alive. People linger in different ways, both publicly and privately.