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

#facts #fiction #i #i think #revelation

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

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

Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church. ↗

— John McGahern

#gratitude #i #nothing #though #upbringing

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