I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk. |
If you're a writer in Dublin and you write a snatch of dialogue, everyone thinks you lifted it from Joyce. The whole idea that he owns language as it is spoken in Dublin is a nonsense. He didn't invent the Dublin accent. It's as if you're encroaching on his area or it's a given that he's on your shoulder. It gets on my nerves. |
It's a big con job. We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it is a dreary little dump most of the time. |
Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it. |
When you are writing for fiction everything is in each word and each individual word is a literary decision, whereas if you are writing for the screen and you have a character walking into a room it is because she walks into the room: it doesn't matter if it isn't glorious literature. |