Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.

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.

Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.

What will happen will happen. There is time for miracles until there is no more time, but time has no end.

The greater part of a men who speak ill of women are speaking of a certain woman.

Had I ever truly been free? Though I wasn’t shipped off to different countries did that make me any less of a prisoner?

Public anger over bank bailouts was as much about fairness as the billions of dollars spent.

For when success a lover's toil attends,Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends

I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies & played the violin: but one of the twins died, & the other has eaten the fiddle — so all is peace.

I've always been profoundly ambivalent about fame. I think it just eats the reality out of you and it can be intoxicating because I like some of it.

At some point you may get fired, but don't worry you will learn from it

I was a big Fred Flintstone fan.