I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.

in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat

The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens.

Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.'

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.