The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.

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

I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television.

The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.

The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.

I think my mother was very spiritual.

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.