Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

I told him that I loved him and that I'd always love him and I felt like a child who throws a centavo into a fountain and then she has to tell someone her most extraordinary wish even though she knows that the wish should be kept secret and that, in telling it, she is quite probably losing it. He replied that I was not to worry, that the penny could come out of the fountain again and again and again.

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

I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.

The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.