Yes, Though I Have Nothing But Gratitude

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 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.

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.

Without The Book Business It Would Be Difficult Or Impossible For True Books To Find Their True Readers And Without That Solitary (and Potentially Subversive) Alone With A Book The Whole Razzmatazz Of Prizes, Banquets, Television Spectaculars, Bestseller Lists, Even Literature Courses, Editors And Authors, Are All Worthless. Unless A Book Finds Lovers Among Those Solitary Readers, It Will Not Live . . . Or Live For Long.

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.