“The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that ...”

“Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have kids. Nothing much happens here.”

“In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness...”

“I feel just fine about ignoring or bypassing the rights of people I have known and loved to be rendered faithfully, or to be left in peace, and out of novels.”

“The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a reali...”

“You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old rooms, the world you've made for yourself ceases to be real. Everything seems to crumble...”

“This world ye speak of, Akira, is built upon survival. The strong conquer and live, while the weak crumble and die.”

“To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.”

“Rey is so strong. She's cool and smart and she can look after herself. Young girls can look at her and know that they can wear trousers if they want to. That they don't have to show off their bodies.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”

“There is no end to wonder once one starts really looking.”

“Look upon the world with loving eyes and the reflection everyone sees will contain love.”

“Go look in the mirror and have a talk with your real boss”