You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.

The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features.

I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.

Anyone who goes into writing has to find out somewhere along the line, he's either naive or insane.

I've not been right for any man or myself since I met you.

The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the organizational ability of a Prussian field marshal, the insight into human relations of a Viennese psychologist, the discipline of a man who prints the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, the exquisite sense of timing of an Olympic gymnast, and by the way, a natural instinct and flair for exceptional use of language.

Pride is a fool's fortress