Claire Keegan

It's not drama.

And I'm sure you sat down to watch something on Netflix and there was nothing on the new stuff, only fellows chasing each other around with guns and car crashes and helicopters and it was dull as could be.

Drama isn't in itself interesting.

Well, I can't summarize a story.

It is impossible.

I think one of the things authors don't like being asked, even though we may not say so, I do say so, is to try and summarize your work.

Because there was a lovely response by Flannery O'Connor.

Her stories are marvelous, but

She said, I can't explain the story because a story is a way of saying something which cannot be said in any other way.

It takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

And it's funny, I have a little thing here behind me.

One of my students gave me this.

And this is it.

It says, I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

And I love that.

And I think, you know, if somebody asks me to spell a difficult word, it's not that I'm a great speller or anything, but I actually have to write it down to be sure that that's how you spell it or that's how you don't spell it in my case, which is often the case.

For me, So Late in the Day was a story about a man.

He's really just a dull civil servant.

And he goes to work in an office in Dublin and takes the bus home.

And he has had some failed relationships with women.