I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.

I think my mother was very spiritual.

When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.

Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.

I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.