Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway and I would disapprove of it.

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

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

I went to live in Barcelona in 1975, when I was twenty. Even before I went there, I knew more about the Spanish Civil War than I did about the Irish Civil War. I liked Barcelona, and then I grew to like a place in the Catalan Pyrenees called the Pillars, especially an area between the village of Flavors and the high mountains around it.

I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn't know Australia, it came as a shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun.