All A Work Of Art Can Do

Most Crime Fiction, No Matter How 'hard-boiled' Or Bloodily Forensic, Is Essentially Sentimental, For Most Crime Writers Are Disappointed Romantics.

Doing What You Do Well Is Death. Your Duty Is To Keep Trying To Do Things That You Don't Do Well, In The Hope Of Learning.

We Carry The Dead With Us Only Until We Die Too, And Then It Is We Who Are Borne Along For A Little While, And Then Our Bearers In Their Turn Drop, And So On Into The Unimaginable Generations.

I Live In Dublin, God Knows Why. There Are Greatly More Congenial Places I Could Have Settled In - Italy, France, Manhattan - But I Like The Climate Here, And Irish Light Seems To Be Essential For Me And For My Writing.

All One Wants To Do Is Make A Small, Finished, Polished, Burnished, Beautiful Object . . . I Mean, That's All One Wants To Do. One Has Nothing To Say About The World, Or Society, Or Morals Or Politics Or Anything Else. One Just Wants To Get The Damn Thing Done, You Know? Kafka Had It Right When He Said That The Artist Is The Man Who Has Nothing To Say. It's True. You Get The Thing Done, But You Don't Actually Have Anything To Communicate, Apart From The Object Itself.