August is a wicked month.

shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but never yet the one true love.

Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic.

After that dark woman you search for someone who will fit into the irregular corners of your heart.

Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire.

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.