I'm going to sound like an old man but at my age, it's lovely doing something that you've never done before.

When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.

Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.

Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.

It's hard for me to measure them, or to assess my books because I'm so close to them.

It's a big con job. We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it is a dreary little dump most of the time.

You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.