I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.

I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. The Gathering did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.

I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.

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.

I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.

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

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised