Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland.

Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.

Love of privacy - perhaps because of the increasing exactions of society - has become in many people almost pathological.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.

Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.