We Absolutely Believed In Heaven And Hell,

I Feel I Grew Up In A Different Century Than I Live In. I Think Most Of Them Are Changes For The Good.

I Belong To The Middle Class That Grew Up Very Influenced By The Catholic Church. The People Of The Novel Are From A More Pagan And Practical World In Which The Christianity Is Just A Veneer.

Ireland Is A Peculiar Society In The Sense That It Was A Nineteenth Century Society Up To About 1970 And Then It Almost Bypassed The Twentieth Century.

Without The Book Business It Would Be Difficult Or Impossible For True Books To Find Their True Readers And Without That Solitary (and Potentially Subversive) Alone With A Book The Whole Razzmatazz Of Prizes, Banquets, Television Spectaculars, Bestseller Lists, Even Literature Courses, Editors And Authors, Are All Worthless. Unless A Book Finds Lovers Among Those Solitary Readers, It Will Not Live . . . Or Live For Long.

We Absolutely Believed In Heaven And Hell, Purgatory, And Even Limbo. I Mean, They Were Actually Closer To Us Than Australia Or Canada, That They Were Real Places.