John McGahern
John McGahern
John McGahernis regarded as one of the most important Irish writers of the latter half of the twentieth century...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 November 1934
CountryIreland
finds until
But that private world, once it's dramatised, doesn't live again until it finds a reader.
linked
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.
empires window building
My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'
rain sky identity
Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.
gratitude church upbringing
Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.
taken loan given
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.
ireland-and-the-irish peculiar nineteenth-century
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.
attitude kissing killing
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.
class people catholic
I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.