“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.”
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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.
John McGahern
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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.
John McGahern
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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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