I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.

I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.

I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.

I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead

Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.

I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety.