I've Never Written Anything That Hasn't Been

I Used To Take Five Or Six Books Away And Bring Five Or Six Books Back. Nobody Gave Me Direction Or Advice And I Read Much In The Way That A Boy Might Watch Television.

The Way I See It Is That All The Ol' Guff About Being Irish Is A Kind Of Nonsense. I Mean, I Couldn't Be Anything Else No Matter What I Tried To Be. I Couldn't Be Chinese Or Japanese.

Yes, But Also One Of The Problems For A Novelist In Ireland Is The Fact That There Are No Formal Manners. I Mean Some People Have Beautiful Manners But There's No Kind Of Agreed Form Of Manners.

Among Its Many Other Obligations, Fiction Always Has To Be Believable. Life Does Not Have To Suffer Such Constraint, And Much Of What Takes Place Is Believable Only Because It Happens.

When I Start To Write, Words Have Become Physical Presence. It Was To See If I Could Bring That Private World To Life That Found Its First Expression Through Reading. I Really Dislike The Romantic Notion Of The Artist.