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

I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.

There are fewer and fewer Jews in Ireland, but we still have one of the most famous Jewish characters in literary history, of course, in Leopold Bloom.

Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.

It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

Good days, they come around the oddest corners.