No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.

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

The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.

One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.

The tunnels of our lives connect, coming to daylight at the oddest moments, and then plunge us into the dark again. We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing möbius strip until we come home, eventually, to ourselves.

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year!