Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn’t a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.
It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.
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.
If you’re from Dublin, for example, chances are you live with your family, if you’re lucky enough to, right up to the mid-20s. And most of the people I know, when they finally sort of set off on their own, they don’t stray all that far.
My parents were sixty years married.
Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.
It’s hard for me to measure them, or to assess my books because I’m so close to them.
I like naming characters.
It’s great meeting children because you never know what they will say.
Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.
I’ve been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn’t. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand.
When I was growing up, the exam system didn’t allow you to write fiction, so you never did.
She’s a pot-of-tea-before-I-say-boo-to-you woman. There’s always a pile of warm teabags in the sink when I come down, like what a horse would leave behind.
Head in the book. Nose sliding down the valley between the pages.
Contact J. Rabbitte, 118, Chestnut Ave., Dublin 21. Rednecks and southsiders need not apply.
I knew all the books in the house. I knew their shapes and smells. I knew what pages would open if I held them with the spine on the ground and let the sides drop. I knew all the books but I couldn’t remember the name of the one on my head.
She was in the book again and, by the time she got to page-turning time again, she’d forgetting I was there.
They were joking, but it was a serious conversation. They were often like that, Mary and her granny, when they were alone together.