John McGahern Quotes

34 quotes in 576 categories

• When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found…
• When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for…
• Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive)…
• The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious…
• Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more…
• Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the…
• My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him…
• As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery.
• When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was…
• I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read…
• ...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming…
• Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood
• 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…
• I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan…
• My father was very outwardly religious.
• I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.
• We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they…
• I'd much prefer to write more quickly.
• I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that…
• I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good.

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