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.

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

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.

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.

Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.

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

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

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

I like naming characters.

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.

I'm going to sound like an old man but at my age, it's lovely doing something that you've never done before.

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.

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 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.

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 great meeting children because you never know what they will say.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.'

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.

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

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

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms.

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.