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.

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.

I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.

We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.

You cannot read any image of the World Trade Center without thinking of 9/11.

The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.

This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for.