Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“They'd listen silenty, with grave faces: but once they'd turn to each other they'd smile cruelly. He couldn't have it both ways. He'd put… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“…But all life turns away from its own eventual hopelessness, leaving insomnia and its night to lovers and the dying.” — John McGahern Copy Share Image
Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“When a long abuse of power is corrected, it is generally replaced by an opposite violence. In the new dispensation all that was good… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
But that private world, once it's dramatised, doesn't live again until it finds a reader. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“McGahern still lives on and works a farm in Leitrim, and friends say that even though he has held high profile academic posts round… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
