It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship. It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S., it involved singing lots of songs about how you were never going to set foot in Ireland again.

I have been to Turkey almost every summer holiday of my life and pretty much only on summer holidays, which makes me a very shallow Turk indeed.

Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.

One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.

I certainly want to continue to write in a way that's intimate. I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.

You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.

I'm completely cricketed out. If I never have to write another word about cricket again, I'll be a happy man.