I think my mother was very spiritual.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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