John McGahern Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.'

  John McGahern

  Empires, Window, Building

  55 Copy quote

• The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.

  John McGahern

  Journey, Calm, Life Is

  John McGahern (2009). “Memoir”, p.107, Faber & Faber

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  John McGahern

  Rain, Sky, Identity

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, Loan, Given

  4 Copy quote

• ...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped; it should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all.

  John McGahern

  Ideas, Feelings, Pace

  "Amongst Women". Book by John McGahern, www.theguardian.com. 1990.

  10 Copy quote

• I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

  John McGahern

  Writing, Thinking, Serious Things

  4 Copy quote

• I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other.

  John McGahern

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  5 Copy quote

• 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, Peculiar, Century

  "The whole world in a community". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.

  John McGahern

  Forever, Losing, Abundance

  8 Copy quote

• I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world.

  John McGahern

  Thinking, Differences, World

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  6 Copy quote

• Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood

  John McGahern

  Blood, Together

  John McGahern (2009). “The Pornographer”, p.14, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Discovery, Ends

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

• We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.

  John McGahern

  Real, Mean, Australia

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Thinking, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Romantic, Reading, Writing

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space.

  John McGahern

  Book, Space, Ideas

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  8 Copy quote

• I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

  John McGahern

  Book, Reading, Charming

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  8 Copy quote

• The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.

  John McGahern

  Distance, Imagination, Needs

  John McGahern (2009). “Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories”, p.3, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.

  John McGahern

  Printed Word, Church, Gothic

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  John McGahern (2009). “Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories”, p.3, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Boys, Advice

  "The whole world in a community". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.

  John McGahern

  Eight, Years, Long

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Thinking, Church

  7 Copy quote

• I'd much prefer to write more quickly.

  John McGahern

  Writing

  "The whole world in a community" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

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