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" Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's a valid part of any endeavour, not just writing. "

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" I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated. "

" Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day. "

" When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else. "

" When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did. "

" When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.' "

" I like naming characters. "

" I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk. "

" I had to make sure I kept an eye on the real world. "

" My parents were sixty years married. "

" Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it. "

" No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words. "

" I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story. "

" My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do. "

" If you are a writer you're at home, which means you're out of touch. You have to make excuses to get out there and look at how the world is changing. "

" The problem with being Irish... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times. "

" I've been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn't. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand. "

" If you're from Dublin, for example, chances are you live with your family, if you're lucky enough to, right up to the mid-20s. And most of the people I know, when they finally sort of set off on their own, they don't stray all that far. "

" It's hard for me to measure them, or to assess my books because I'm so close to them. "

" I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do. "

" When I was a kid, if you didn't speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don't think that's the case anymore. Although, admittedly, it is the center of the universe. "

" I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican. "

" When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea. "

" Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal. "

" I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written and I like vampires. "

" Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. "

" I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop. "

" Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child. "

" It's a big con job. We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it is a dreary little dump most of the time. "

" It's great meeting children because you never know what they will say. "