I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other. — 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
Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
I suppose . . . in writing you can't have regrets. I mean, you just get it down the way it was . .… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
