#ed

Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space. ↗

— John McGahern

#book #community #concentrated #concentrates #dominant

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 and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer. ↗

— John McGahern

#catholic #catholic church #christianity #church #class

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy. ↗

— John McGahern

#alice #billy #book #called #charming

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

#completely #exist #i #i see #i think

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 much in the way that a boy might watch television. ↗

— John McGahern

#away #back #books #boy #bring

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese. ↗

— John McGahern

#anything #being #chinese #else #i

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 were real places. ↗

— John McGahern

#actually #australia #believed #canada #closer

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 a minor offence compared to kissing somebody. ↗

— John McGahern

#attitude #compared #did #i #killing

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 granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not. ↗

— John McGahern

#around #becomes #danger #forever #going

Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners. ↗

— John McGahern

#also #beautiful #fact #form #formal