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Authors:
John McGahern Quotes

John McGahern quotes

Irish Writer November 12, 1934 – March 30, 2006

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Quotes

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
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
John McGahern quote: "I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much..."
I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy. John McGahern
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
John McGahern quote: "I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a..."
I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years. John McGahern
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
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. John McGahern
As looking down from great heights brings the urge to fall and end the terror of falling, so his very watching put pressure on them to make a slip as they dried and stacked the plates and cups. John McGahern
John McGahern quote: "My father was very outwardly religious."
My father was very outwardly religious. John McGahern
John McGahern quote: "only then did I wake out of the book."
only then did I wake out of the book. John McGahern
John McGahern quote: "Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in..."
Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church. John McGahern
I think it's linked to the realisation that we're not going to live forever and that the way of saying and the language become more important than the story. John McGahern
John McGahern quote: "To leave the everpresent tension of Great Meadow was like..."
To leave the everpresent tension of Great Meadow was like shedding stiff, formal clothes or kicking off pinching shoes. John McGahern
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
For example, it's only about 20 years ago the people in that community would have got telephone lines, and it would be only about in the 1950s that electricity came to that part of the world. Television wouldn't have come till 1970. John McGahern

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