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In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.

Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos within ghettos.

I'm such a fangirl when it comes to other writers. I read 250 books a year, and I'm always talking up books by other authors.

Of course it is very limiting to be labeled a lesbian or queer writer. We live in a homophobic culture, and even people who aren't hateful per se assume they won't get anything from a queer book.

I am a big believer in the fact that all authors really write only one book.

I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.

I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.

I think good books have to make a few people angry.

Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop. All gay, of course, although I swear I didn't know that at the time. Yet all of them, it turned out, had had a parent who died during their childhood. Sexuality is nothing compared to that.