Novelist

I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican.

Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.

I'm going to sound like an old man but at my age, it's lovely doing something that you've never done before.

Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.

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.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's a valid part of any endeavour, not just writing.

My parents were sixty years married.

I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written and I like vampires.

I had to make sure I kept an eye on the real world.

When I was a kid, if you didn't speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don't think that's the case anymore. Although, admittedly, it is the center of the universe.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

It's hard for me to measure them, or to assess my books because I'm so close to them.

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.

When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.

I like naming characters.

Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.