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Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more than a gift on loan.
John McGahern
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John McGahern
Age: 71 †
Born: 1934
Born: November 12
Died: 2006
Died: March 30
Farmer
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Dublin city
Sean
Comes
Given
Away
Loan
Anything
Possession
Never
Gift
Expect
Taken
Learn
More quotes by John McGahern
I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.
John McGahern
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.
John McGahern
Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens.
John McGahern
When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.
John McGahern
The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.
John McGahern
When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.
John McGahern
Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood
John McGahern
I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.
John McGahern
I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.
John McGahern
I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.
John McGahern
My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'
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
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.
John McGahern
I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good.
John McGahern
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
Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.
John McGahern
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
The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.
John McGahern
Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.
John McGahern
I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.
John McGahern
