Kevin Barry Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“When you wake up, instead of checking emails on your phone, or counting your retweets, pick up a pen and scratch a few sentences into a notebook.”

“At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews - Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ireland, that didn't work out very well, as you can imagine.”

“I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder, writing short stories, novels, memoir, travelogue, critical biography. He lived to be almost 100, and he never stopped, and his work is unified by a great generosity of spirit.”

“I wanted to write about Jews in Montana, so I went there by plane and bus, only to discover that there are no Jews in Montana. It didn't deter me.”

“I was freelancing for years in Cork and around. I also wrote freelance pieces for 'The Irish Times.'”

“Libraries are where we learn that we can live our lives through books.”

“'City of Bohane' has been optioned for film, and I've finished a first draft of the script.”

“Don DeLillo's 'White Noise,' which I read when I was 19. It showed me that a book can be funny as hell and deadly serious.”

“I don't quite operate within the realist mode. I kind of push the stories out towards the cusp of believability - that's the area of interest for me.”

“I like to be happy when I'm writing. If not, then how will the reader manage?”