I know Irish-American people. I know what their homes look like. I know what they have for dinner. I know how they turn a phrase. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I think place and time for me is often a matter of convenience, something I can use to another end rather than something I’m trying to define because it’s somehow fascinating to me in itself. It’s more what the place can do for the larger goals I have for the work. Alice McDermott Read Quote
Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I’ve always been interested in that. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I’ve got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they’re described. That’s what I love when I read. Alice McDermott Read Quote
A perfect poem you can’t pin down and say, ‘This is exactly what it meant to me.’ It’s not a self-help manual. Alice McDermott Read Quote
I am not a theologian or a historian, and I feel no call to become a defender of the faith, so in my case, the search for what remains valuable focuses on language itself: Catholic prayer, ritual, the naming of things. Alice McDermott Read Quote
