As a boy I was very solitary but blissfully happy. We lived on the edge of town in Wexford and I wandered the fields with my dog, declaiming Keats to… - John Banville

I was pondering the question, which I have pondered before, of whether such great revelatory moments really so occur, or if it is only that, out of need, our lives so lacking in drama, we invest past events with a significance they do not warrant.

When I started writing I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.

Ambiguity is the essence of Irish writing, I think.