I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good.

I think my mother was very spiritual.

I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.

I suppose . . . in writing you can't have regrets. I mean, you just get it down the way it was . . . it's only wishful thinking that things could be other than they were.

Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.

My father was very outwardly religious.

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