“Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.”

“I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.”

“I didn't say any of this to my sister. How I saw her being broken into mediocrity and motherhood; her body broken and then her mind - or did her mind go first, it's sort of hard to disentangle - and then for her to turn around and say Broken is Best, I didn't say how that made me furious beyond measure.”

“Writing is mostly a case of mood management. The emotion you have is not absolute, it is temporary. It may be useful, but it is not the truth. It is not you.”

“Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.”

“A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking”

“Her past is behind her, her future is of little concern. She moves towards the grave, at her own speed.”

“Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game; endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be.”

“Up and down' is Irish for anything at all--from crying into the dishes to full-blown psychosis. Though, now that I think about, a psychotic is more usually 'not quite herself'.”