The Best That An Individual Can Do

[my Early Stories] Are The Work Of A Living Writer Whom I Know In A Sense, But Can Never Meet.

If A Theme Or Idea Is Too Near The Surface, The Novel Becomes Simply A Tract Illustrating An Idea.

Often When I Write I Am Trying To Make Words Do The Work Of Line And Color. I Have The Painter's Sensitivity To Light. Much Of My Writing Is Verbal Painting.

Where Would The Irish Be Without Someone To Be Irish At?

As A Novelist, I Cannot Occupy Myself With "characters," Or At Any Rate Central Ones, Who Lack Panache, In One Or Another Sense, Who Would Be Incapable Of A Major Action Or A Major Passion, Or Who Have Not A Touch Of The Ambiguity, The Ultimate Unaccountability, The Enlarging Mistiness Of Persons "in History." History, As More Austerely I Now Know It, Is Not Romantic. But I Am.