I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me like Irish faces. I hadn't yet learnt how careful outsiders have to be when talking about race in America, and I'd put my foot in it. Someone stood up and said aggressively, 'What do you mean by Irish faces?'

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

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