I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world.

I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.

I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other.

But that private world, once it's dramatised, doesn't live again until it finds a reader.

My father was very outwardly religious.

Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space.

When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.

Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.

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.

I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.

The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.

I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good.

I think it's linked to the realisation that we're not going to live forever and that the way of saying and the language become more important than the story.

I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world.

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.

When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.

For example, it's only about 20 years ago the people in that community would have got telephone lines, and it would be only about in the 1950s that electricity came to that part of the world. Television wouldn't have come till 1970.

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.

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.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television.

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.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

Well concerning the world records that I did, I think it helps a lot to me, yeah. I think it's a very individual thing because I heard some people say, like, oh I don't like it at all. But I definitely, for me it really made a big difference.

There are many experiments and a great deal of research that can be performed on the station that make a difference in our lives and we are committed to supporting this important vocation.

We started filming in 1993 which was only four years after the fall of communism. The difference in Budapest over the last five years has been remarkable.

The difference between talking on your cell phone while driving and speaking with a passenger is huge. The person on the other end of the cell phone is chattering away, oblivious.

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.

I think the human body is beautiful, and I don't really have a huge problem in dealing with it, but it's the context, the environment and what I feel about it that that makes the difference for me.

From my very first day in the Mayor's office, I have worked closely with the Council members who share our vision of a city hall that really protects taxpayers and cares... yes... about the little things that make a big difference in people's lives.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

All this is applicable to the intellectual faculties of man. There is a considerable difference between one person and another as regards these faculties, as is well known to philosophers.

I love those hockey moms. You know what they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is? Lipstick.

The difference between style and fashion is quality.

I used to think that it didn't make any difference how far you ran if you had a good, strong musculoskeletal system and no underlying cardiovascular problems.

The difference between relief pitching when I did it today is simple, there is too much of it. It's one of those cases where more is not necessarily better.

It makes no difference if I burn my bridges behind me - I never retreat.

It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything.

We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.

It don't make no difference where I go or what happens, so long as I can play the full nine.