Una McCormack

That's not quite true.

Oh, that's brilliant, isn't it?

Yeah.

I think we joke a lot about the food, there's sort of simultaneously a real, there's a real sort of famished nature to the characters, I think.

and a kind of hunger but at the same time this sort of distaste and revulsion that you know there's just something too fleshly about these people.

Amazing.

Moment of brief encounter or something, yeah.

Yes, it's from the start of chapter six of Look at Me.

It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me.

It is your penance for not being lucky.

It is an attempt to reach out to others and to make them love you.

It is your instinctive protest when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals and that no one will speak for you.

I would give my entire output of words past, present and to come in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state I hurt or I hate or I want.

Or indeed, look at me.

And I do not go back on this.

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown.

It can only be forgotten.

And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness.

For the writer, there is no oblivion, only endless memory.

Wow.