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.

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

Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live . . . or live for long.

I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.

My father was very outwardly religious.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

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