Personally, I like the social novel. I like writing that gets in and under the hood and looks about - at what's going on. But I don't say to any writer that that's absolutely what they should do.

I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.

Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.

The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.

Anakana Schofield is part of a new wave of wonderful Irish fiction-international in scope and electrically alive.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

I love short stories. They're like small imploding universes. They are very tightly bound and controlled. I'd been wanting to write one for ages but just got tangled up in novels. The novel is the same in the sense that it is also a universe, but it explodes outwards with all that shrapnel going in several different directions. I don't see too much difference in the forms except for the fact that writing short stories is like sprinting rather than long-distance running.