An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.
Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.
There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.
War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.
I was dropped by my publisher after my first two books. But I always believed in myself.
I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.
It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.
It takes so many people to make a success story like that. It starts with the song and the songwriters, then Mark Wright's producing, all of the players that played on it, me singing, the marketing department, the promotion department at the label. . . It takes a lot of people to make a hit like that.
The horse-laugh indicates brutality of character.
It's kind of amazing; I don't know anything. It's an interesting way to work where you're living in the moment and making decisions for your character in the moment. You have to go with your gut on everything - try not to over-think things. That tends to make me doubt what I did, but then that's always the case. I'm a worrier. I have to accept that and just be a worrier.
I think more and more people became aware that social media was starting to feel like a more toxic space. And, I mean - quite a lot of incidents of people getting very, very angry about all kinds of things and attacking people.