I Think The Northern Ireland Accent Is

Cynicism Is Easy. An Optimist Is A Braver Cynic.

Every Man With His Own Peculiar Vice. His Will Hardly Rock Heaven Or Hell.

Everything Was Fabulous, Even Our Breakdowns.

Even If People Laughed At The Notion Of Goodness, If They Found It Sentimental, Or Nostalgic, It Didn't Matter -- It Was None Of Those Things, He Said, And It Had To Be Fought For.

I Love Short Stories. They're Like Small Imploding Universes. They Are Very Tightly Bound And Controlled. I'd Been Wanting To Write One For Ages But Just Got Tangled Up In Novels. The Novel Is The Same In The Sense That It Is Also A Universe, But It Explodes Outwards With All That Shrapnel Going In Several Different Directions. I Don't See Too Much Difference In The Forms Except For The Fact That Writing Short Stories Is Like Sprinting Rather Than Long-distance Running.