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

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

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?

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

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.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

What’s old doesn’t need to be old-fashioned. It gets reborn.