Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all -- we were wet.

I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'

You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.

There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.