They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.

He sits in an old armchair in the corner covered with bits of blankets and a bucket behind the chair that stinks enough to make you sick and when you look at that old man in the dark corner you want to get a hose with hot water and strip him and wash him down and give him a big feed of rashers and eggs and mashed potatoes with loads of butter and salt and onions.I want to take the man from the Boer War and the pile of rags in the bed and put them in a big sunny house in the country with birds chirping away outside the window and a stream gurgling.

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.

If you were mean to your parents, they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.

My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.