Quotes

Every publisher or agent I've ever met told me the same thing - that Irish readers don't want to read about the bad old days of the Troubles; neither do the English and Americans - they only want to read about the Ireland of The Quiet Man, when red-haired widows are riding bicycles and everyone else is on a horse.

I was knocked down and dragged by a police Land Rover in a hit-and-run.

I've never been a believer in the word-count thing. I write slowly and tinker with the words and the word order, and I throw a lot of stuff out.

I think if you grow up in a culture where the army is out on the street sighting you with rifles, it has to have some kind of psychological impact.

I studied law at Warwick University, then philosophy at Oxford. I met my wife Leah there. She is American, so I followed her to New York.

When we moved to Australia in 2008, I decided to try to live off the writing.

After secondary school, the big thing to do was apply for uni in England or Scotland and then just stay there.

The winters in Denver are brutal; it snows from the end of October to April.

A specific editor in a specific place likes the book, and you're in. A different editor on a different day goes, 'Oh, this isn't for me', or doesn't even look at it, and that's it.

I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover.

I think the poetry that came out of Belfast, and especially the Queen's University set, in the 1970s and '80s - you know, Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Ciaran Carson - that was probably the finest body of work since the Gaelic renaissance, up there with the work of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory.

People in the North are really taciturn and reticent, and they don't really like to talk about the past.

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

I don't like writing essays or theory.

I want to speak, to sing to total strangers. It's my way of talking to the world.

Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.

Written poetry is different. Best thing is to see it in performance first, then read it. Performance is more provocative.

There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends.

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll.

I use the language I use to my friends. They wouldn't believe me if I used some high-flown literary language. I want them to believe me.

As a reader, when the writer gets sentimental, you drift, because there's something fishy going on there. You recognize a moment that's largely about the writer and the writer's own need to believe in something that might not in fact exist. As a reader, you think, 'Where did the story go? Where did the person I'm reading about go?'

Satisfaction isn't a state that comes easily to me.

My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.

I like to say, 'You get as much story as you can take.' But you have to effectively render it.

The best comics enlist you to take accountability for who you are, whether you like it or not.