A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time.

I'm just saying, take courage. That and pretty much that alone is never the incorrect thing to do.

I think empathy is a guy who punches you in the face at a bus station, and you're somehow able to look at that him and know enough about what situation he was in to know that he had to do that and not to hit back. That's empathy, and nothing ever happens in writing that has that kind of moral heroism about it.

The justification for rap rock seems to be that if you take really bad rock and put really bad rap over it, the result is somehow good, provided the raps are barked by an overweight white guy with cropped hair and forearm tattoos.

Ireland starts for me with the end of The Dead, which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

Not watching TV gets me in a lot of trouble in my household because my wife and daughter have a lot of shows they like to watch.

The city of Cork - the urban center, where all the shops and bars and everything are - is actually an island, a river island.