Dermot Healy

"It is a costly thing living here to fight the erosion. The sea is constantly threatening to cut into the coastline and sweep all this away. Every year we have to haul stones up here to repair the dama…"

"I'm no good at dinner parties. I feel very uneasy at them."

"I rang up this publisher and they asked me what I was doing at the time. I told them I was a house-painter, so first of all they had me come round and paint the place. Only later did they consider my …"

"I know writing is what I do but I still don't see myself as one."

"I like the idea of stopping mid-sentence, like Graham Greene."

"taught me a lot about the normal and the abnormal, and the distance between them. He's out there by himself. You get the jump in the feet when you read certain passages by him. That's the mark of trul…"

"Without the reader there would be no writer."

"There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer – reading is so much a part of it."