#i

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

Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness. ↗

— Bryant H. McGill

#great #happiness #secrets

What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe - why, intelligence never built a steam-engine! Circumstances built a steam-engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#innovation #intelligence #beauty

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 think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world. ↗

— John McGahern

#between #cannot #difference #each #i

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

I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years. ↗

— John McGahern

#been #eight #hasn #i #long

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 twentieth century. ↗

— John McGahern

#almost #century #ireland #nineteenth #nineteenth century

My father was very outwardly religious. ↗

— John McGahern

#outwardly #religious #very