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

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

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.

Reporting provides reminders that things are always more complicated than you think.

At GQ, there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want.

Freaky things happen all the time in the world. I suppose everything has to happen for the first time at some point.

There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That word—tension—has an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other end—is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?