When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.
She’d tried her hand at most things, but drew the line at honesty.
The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.
Schools don’t really allow failure and yet it’s part of any endeavour, not just writing.
I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written and I like vampires.
I don’t work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.
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.
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.