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

It's great meeting children because you never know what they will say.

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.

I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican.

I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.

When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.

Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.