For 10 Or 11 Years, I Had

Write Whatever Way You Like. Fiction Is Made Of Words On A Page; Reality Is Made Of Something Else. It Doesn't Matter How "real" Your Story Is, Or How "made Up": What Matters Is Its Necessity.

I Became A Full-time Writer In 1993 And Have Been Very Happy, Insofar As Anybody Is, Since.

There Are So Few People Given Us To Love. I Want To Tell My Daughters This, That Each Time You Fall In Love It Is Important, Even At Nineteen. Especially At Nineteen. And If You Can, At Nineteen, Count The People You Love On One Hand, You Will Not, At Forty, Have Run Out Of Fingers On The Other. There Are So Few People Given Us To Love And They All Stick.

My Kids Are Supposed To Live Till They Are One Hundred. You Don't Have To Have A Perfect House Or A Perfect Relationship With Your Child Or A Perfect Child, And You Yourself Do Not Have To Be Perfect.

In More Static Societies, Like Ireland, You Can Tell Where A Person Is From By Their Surname, Or Where Their Grandparents Are From.