When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.

As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'

Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more than a gift on loan.

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

I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world.