Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church. — John McGahern Catholic Copy Share Image
Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts. — John McGahern Facts 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
I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance. — John McGahern Demand 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 Death Copy Share Image
Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood — 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… — John McGahern Communication Copy Share Image
“If it's well written, even an obscene book cannot be immoral. John McGahern, Galway, October 6th 2003. "Acclaimed as the most important… — John McGahern Books Copy Share Image
“There are no things more cruel than truths about ourselves spoken to us by another that are perceived to be at least… — John McGahern Truth Copy Share Image
For example, it's only about 20 years ago the people in that community would have got telephone lines, and it would be… — John McGahern Community Copy Share Image
Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see… — John McGahern Education Copy Share Image
I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from… — John McGahern Books Copy Share Image
Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are… — John McGahern Book Copy Share Image
“As men obsessed with the idea that all knowledge lies within a woman's body, but having entered it to find themselves as… — John McGahern Desire 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… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“For the girls the regular comings and goings restored their superior sense of self, a superiority they had received intact from Moran… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“The woman dying of cancer in The Barracks facing the raw fear of everything in her life disintegrating. The abused adolescent boy… — John McGahern Death 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… — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“Sensing her hard separateness in their separate footsteps as they walked towards her home in the sleeping suburbs, he began to feel… — John McGahern Fullness of life Copy Share Image
“Dark, was banned by the Irish state censor for obscenity. The story was set, as so much of McGahern's later fiction would… — John McGahern Censorship Copy Share Image
“To leave the everpresent tension of Great Meadow was like shedding stiff, formal clothes or kicking off pinching shoes.” — John McGahern Copy Share Image
As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery. — John McGahern Discovery Copy Share Image
I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years. — John McGahern Copy Share Image
“Time should have stopped with the clocks but instead it moved in a glazed dream of tiredness without their ticking insistence.” — John McGahern Clock Copy Share Image
I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor. — John McGahern Bible Copy Share Image
“People are funny. They look down from all sorts of heights and then if the looking down has no effect they get… — john mcgahern Comedy Copy Share Image
I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in… — John McGahern Catholic Copy Share Image
“As looking down from great heights brings the urge to fall and end the terror of falling, so his very watching put… — 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… — John McGahern Abuse of power Copy Share Image
The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible… — John McGahern Calm 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… — John McGahern Beautiful Copy Share Image
