I think it's dangerous to have lots of time on your hands as a writer. Time to pursue every little alleyway, to… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I try not to be too precious about my writing, and I try to be willing to walk away from it for… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I don't want to be influenced as to what I write in the next book, to hear those voices in my head… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
The Chilean novelist Isabel Allende says there's no such thing as writer's block, you just need to live a bit more. I… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
The key thing in my becoming a writer was going on a Arvon Foundation residential writing course. I took with me a… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
As you'll know yourself, there are these moments when you're writing a book when one remark or moment will pull everything together… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
You learn so much with each book, but it's what you teach yourself by writing your own books and by reading good… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I always had the urge to write. Not in the sense of wanting to be a writer, but just writing things down,… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
Always, at the end of every book, there are things you will be unsatisfied with, and still more things that later on… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
For a while I used to listen to those whispers about babies costing you books, and Cyril Connolly's loathsome quote that "There… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
My husband, William Sutcliffe, the writer, is my first reader and in many ways my most important. That initial reading of the… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
In the course of writing a book I'll produce loads of pieces of paper to help the novel itself. Diagrams, charts, family… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
Despite being from Ireland, I've always avoided writing about it, for two reasons. For a very small country, Ireland has produced an… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
Something that had an enormous influence over my relationship with language was my stammer. I had a really bad stammer in my… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
“There on the landing sits the typewriter. It is clogged with dust, the ribbon dried and flimsy. Looking at it gives Felix… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I still have a stammer. I hate it; I loathe and despise it. But it's always there, and I have lots of… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
While I was writing the book, one of my children was diagnosed with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a very tiny word for a… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
She wanted to say, no. She wanted to say, I have a son, there is a child, this cannot happen. Because you know that… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
Two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people. — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you 'Don't worry. This may… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
I met a retired police detective. And he said to me that the interesting thing about heatwaves, from a police perspective, is that the… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
While I was writing the book, one of my children was diagnosed with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a very tiny word for a wide-ranging neurological… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
“Why is it that twenty-four hours in the company of your family is capable of reducing you to a teenager?” — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
I think it's dangerous to have lots of time on your hands as a writer. Time to pursue every little alleyway, to follow every… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
I think all families have these secrets, and it's sometimes the strangest things that bring them out. That was part of my interest in… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
My husband, William Sutcliffe, the writer, is my first reader and in many ways my most important. That initial reading of the manuscript is… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave. — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
“That's because they're of the past. All photos of the past look melancholy and wistful precisely because they capture something that's gone.” — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
We always planned to move back to the Republic but it never happened, I'm not sure why. My dad is one of those immigrants… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
I was interested in the ripples of feminism passing through Britain and Ireland in the mid-Seventies - how the reverberations of the feminist political… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
In the first night of the Arvon Foundation course, Elspeth Barker said something about the newspaper along the lines of - and I'm paraphrasing… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
