“STYLE IS NOT HOW YOU WRITE IT IS HOW YOUDO NOT WRITE LIKE ANYONE ELSE”

“Anyone who conceives of writing as an agreeable stroll towards a middle-class life-style will never write anything but crap.”

“If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing. . . If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.”

“You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.”

“And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)”

“If you write about the present it is very much more difficult to make things sound convincing. But writing about the past means that you are writing about a situation in which you know at least as much as anyone else.”