Exactly as we might ask God, and do ask God, to change our fate. The difference is that in the story the writer actually replies and in the end even changes his mind.

People who have experienced nothing love to tell stories while people who have experienced a great deal suddenly have no stories to tell at all.

You say fate is almost indispensable to literature - I think it's completely indispensable, at least in a novel, because a novel always has a plot. Even if nothing happens, even if someone just spends a day walking around Dublin, or whatever, there's still something going on.

Also, whenever you have direct speech, and I don't quite know why, but it always gets better in English. Dialogue, the flow of dialogue, English just has a better way with it.

I think I can work anywhere, but you don't get the same kind of inspiration everywhere. New York theater has become a big inspiration for me. I only started writing for the stage myself because I like to see the good, mostly off-Broadway plays in New York.

When I write a book I'm always questioning the project as a whole. I always feel I might have to just throw it away and forget about it, and I've done that with novels I've started and worked on for a long time. It's an option I need in order to write freely.

I think that's just what happens when you write a big bestseller. After that you need to find out: What's the best way to go on? And the worst thing you could do would be to try to repeat the formula. That would be suffocating.