"I called the boss a ‘fucker’ one day – not to his face, but it got back to him – so that was the end."

“I don't want to become the kind of writer who's putting out a book every two years. Money is not my primary concern. I've been broke before and I'll do it again.”

“I write to discover something, not so much to set down what I already know. I see ignorance and confusion all around me. I see these things in myself. I'm subject of all kinds of fears and conflicting desires. But one of those desires, the sanest one, is to see through the confusion.”

“I think if you've got something to say and you can say it with less, that's the way to go.”

“I used to write in the Rathmines public library. I was on the dole and living in a bedsit down the road. It was too cold to write at home. I had one of those meters that you had to put 50p into. So I'd go down the library every morning and after lunch to scribble stuff in longhand in the study room there.”

“Tolstoy's War and Peace is overblown – do yourself a favour and read his Death of Ivan Ilych.”

“I meet people who tell me things like, ‘I read your book in two days’. Please don’t do that. These things take me years to write. Slow down. Everything you read, slow down. Reading is our great act of resistance in this age of speed and carelessness.”