I Don't Believe In Happiness

Sit And Quiet Yourself. Luxuriate In A Certain Memory And The Details Will Come. Let The Images Flow. You'll Be Amazed At What Will Come Out On Paper. I'm Still Learning What It Is About The Past That I Want To Write. I Don't Worry About It. It Will Emerge. It Will Insist On Being Told.

I Am Teaching. Storytelling Is Teaching

When I Look Back On My Childhood I Wonder How I Survived At All. It Was, Of Course, A Miserable Childhood: The Happy Childhood Is Hardly Worth Your While. Worse Than The Ordinary Miserable Childhood Is The Miserable Irish Childhood, And Worse Yet Is The Miserable Irish Catholic Childhood.

People Everywhere Brag And Whimper About The Woes Of Their Early Years, But Nothing Can Compare With The Irish Version: The Poverty; The Shiftless Loquacious Father; The Pious Defeated Mother Moaning By The Fire; Pompous Priests; Bullying School Masters; The English And The Terrible Things They Did To Us For Eight Hundred Long Years. Above All -- We Were Wet.

I Just Have To Proceed As Usual. No Matter What Happens, Nothing Helps With The Writing Of The Next Book.