I suppose . . . in writing you can't have regrets. I mean, you just get it down the way it was . . . it's only wishful thinking that things could be other than they were. John McGahern More Quotes by John McGahern More Quotes From John McGahern Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century. John McGahern ireland-and-the-irish century peculiar As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery. John McGahern ends writing discovery When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody. John McGahern kissing killing attitude I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television. John McGahern advice boys book Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more than a gift on loan. John McGahern loan given taken Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens. John McGahern suffering doe fiction The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance. John McGahern distance imagination needs I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church. John McGahern catholic mean thinking I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story. John McGahern differences book thinking The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book. John McGahern church book thinking I think my mother was very spiritual. John McGahern spiritual mother thinking The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese. John McGahern chinese matter mean Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners. John McGahern beautiful mean people I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor. John McGahern gothic printed-word church For example, it's only about 20 years ago the people in that community would have got telephone lines, and it would be only about in the 1950s that electricity came to that part of the world. Television wouldn't have come till 1970. John McGahern community people television world But that private world, once it's dramatised, doesn't live again until it finds a reader. John McGahern once again live world I think it's linked to the realisation that we're not going to live forever and that the way of saying and the language become more important than the story. John McGahern live think language way
