Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually - our sense of personality is a sense of outrage.

When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.

She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?