If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.

The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting one. When I was an undergraduate, there was a glib notion around that there was no reason to suppose a bad man could be a good writer.

But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror.

Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense.

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.

All I know is a door into the dark