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 centur…

- John Mcgahern

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 than a gift on loan.

- John Mcgahern

Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood

- John Mcgahern

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 wer…

- John Mcgahern

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 …

- John Mcgahern

Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead gho…

- John Mcgahern

I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the …

- John Mcgahern

I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

- John Mcgahern

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 say, 'So…

- John Mcgahern