All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.

I dont know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, its very difficult to find.

We artists love to talk tough, but we're just as sentimental as everyone else when it comes down to it.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

I live in Dublin, God knows why. There are greatly more congenial places I could have settled in - Italy, France, Manhattan - but I like the climate here, and Irish light seems to be essential for me and for my writing.