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

You can count the dead, but you can't count the cost. We've got no math for Heaven.

I'm a complete and utter fiction. Then again, we all are.

They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.

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

Whatever you say, say nothing.

I love short stories. They're like small imploding universes. They are very tightly bound and controlled. I'd been wanting to write one for ages but just got tangled up in novels. The novel is the same in the sense that it is also a universe, but it explodes outwards with all that shrapnel going in several different directions. I don't see too much difference in the forms except for the fact that writing short stories is like sprinting rather than long-distance running.