But that private world, once it's dramatised, doesn't live again until it finds a reader.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken.