I always defined myself in terms of my talkativeness, and being without a voice hits me in a number of ways.

Most of the time, I'm not scared. I get on with life, not because I'm a fatalist, but because that's the most congenial way of dealing with things. Indeed, most of the time, I'm not conscious of dealing with anything.

People assume that death hanging over my head would allow me to put things into perspective, but that's not how it works.

We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

In 'The Third Hotel,' my narrator, Claire, is wrestling with this sense of perpetual unfinishedness. She's trying to make sense of her husband's death, how someone's life can just stop and not continue, and of the lack of resolution in her own inner life.

I attended the bedside of a friend who was dying in a Dublin hospital. She lived her last hours in a public ward with a television blaring out a football match, all but drowning our final conversation.

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.