Anne Enright

It is very hard to trace the effect of words on a life. ”

There's no such thing as a life that is not normal, or, there's no such thing as a life that is not abnormal. We all have amazing lives; we all have very dull lives. ”

Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe. ”

I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me. ”

I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true. ”

I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time. ”

If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts. ”

The writing day can be, in some ways, too short, but it's actually a long series of hours, for months at a time, and there is a stillness there. ”

I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since. ”

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural. ”