My father was very outwardly religious.

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.

Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.

I have a very pop voice, but there's so much of me I associate mostly with urban music, so I try to blend the two.

To become pure is not difficult. Make the choices that will lead you to freedom and liberation - not enslavement to the wills, actions and desires of others.

Those who are looking for paradise on Earth should come and see Dubrovnik.

I've always explored various areas of society.

I crawled into my book and pulled the pages over my head.

The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.

What I most want is to spring out of this personality, then to sit apart from that leaping. I've lived too long where I can be reached.

[Democrats] in their frustration at having lost, they've thrown away the camouflage now.

From joy all beings have come and unto joy they all return.