“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.”
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When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.
John McGahern 
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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.
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I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.
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I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good.
John McGahern
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