I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.

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

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart's deep need for instruction.

Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.

She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.