John McGahern Quotes

John McGahern — Irish Writer born on November 12, 1934, died on March 30, 2006

John McGahern is regarded as one of the most important Irish writers of the latter half of the twentieth century... (wikipedia)

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Quotes

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