I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'

When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.

We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.

I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.

The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.

When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

Everytime you fall, you fly for a second.

Possibility is possible till it becomes Possible

Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.

The only ones who will find real happiness are those who find a way to serve

When I am willing to step into the realm of uncertainty and ambiguity, I open myself up to infinite possibilities.

I feel very responsible for my brother, and I try and protect him every chance I get.

The things that can go wrong are particular to mediums and they make for qualities that really are of the medium.

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

You have to enjoy it. It is not going to happen every year, so this is the year that it is happening and we have got to go out there and enjoy it.