Happiness is knowing and appreciating what you've got. I am very, very, very grateful for what, to me, is dead easy.

Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.

I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer.

I've had a good life, full of more success and happiness than I ever expected.

I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous, and anxious to be a saint - a settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith.

If you write what you know about, you will always be on safe ground. I am very edgy and nervous about going into territories I know nothing about. That's why you don't find much high finance, group sex, or yachting parties in my stories.

If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in the bookstore, I'll move mine to the front. I've told them I do this, and they've confessed to doing the same thing to me.