I cried for a yearIn this extract from his new memoir, 'Staring at Lakes', the 'Irish Times' columnist reflects on the light and dark in his life…Sat Feb 16 2013 - 00:00
I'd love to lose god, and I've a perfect alternativeOpinion: It’s almost St Valentine’s Day and my beloved has gone off to DublinTue Feb 12 2013 - 00:00
Some ring the Samaritans. I prefer to call MumbaiSome people call the Samaritans when they’re depressed. Other people call their relations for a chatTue Feb 5 2013 - 00:00
A pilgrimage to Lodz, and a glimpse of the ghettoI am not a Jew, but I went to Lodz on pilgrimage, just to walk around the old Jewish ghetto in the snow and to watch the full…Tue Jan 29 2013 - 00:00
I gazed too long. She asked what I was thinkingLast week I met Páraic Breathnach in Galway, a big, sculpted figure whose eyes are dark and mysterious, like small lakes in Connemara…Tue Jan 22 2013 - 00:00
I will arise and go now, and go to PolandI said, “I’m going to Poland.” The General looked at me like I had two heads. “The flights are cheap,” I explained.Tue Jan 15 2013 - 00:00
Pyjamas and Pentecostal theology in the MidlandsThe price of mince pies got up my nose in a fancy bun shop on New Year’s Eve: €5 for a coffee and one little pieTue Jan 8 2013 - 00:00
A baby born out of the poetics of a domestic warIt wasn’t really the crows that caused the argumentSat Dec 22 2012 - 00:00
I have lost that terrible sense of forebodingTwo years ago I was in the study of Shandonagh House, a large 19th-century homestead near Mullingar, writing my diaryTue Dec 18 2012 - 00:00
The horse looked me in the eye and said . . .The house has been emptied in readiness for decorations and Christmas lightsTue Dec 11 2012 - 00:00
Gathering thoughts in the great silence of cyberspaceI love the way Americans make private things public, and the way Barack Obama cries, and the emails I get from Laura in Montana…Tue Nov 27 2012 - 00:00
The mechanical guts of the universeMETEOROLOGY: Illustrated Weather Eye, By Brendan McWilliams, compiled by Anne McWilliams, Gill & Macmillan, 184pp, €19.99…Sat Nov 24 2012 - 00:00
The unbearable shame of being an Irish maleA few years ago I got a letter in the post with photocopies of newspaper cuttings from a woman who felt that Stone Age religious…Tue Nov 20 2012 - 00:00
Talking of the trees and the bees by the pale moonlightSometimes at night, in the garden, I talk to the treesTue Nov 13 2012 - 00:00
I am choked with emotions that are not allowed outYears ago, when I met strangers in bars I always got an urge to tell them everything. But I never did. I just got drunk.Tue Nov 6 2012 - 00:00
I've almost given up on theatre and church. I don't belongWhen I was a teenager in a duffle coat and only shaved twice a week, an older man said to me one night that I looked confused…Tue Oct 30 2012 - 00:00
I saw hair bands for sale. Pink, but that wasn't importantI WAS TRYING to park in Carrick-on-Shannon, which wasn’t easy because there was a big Traveller wedding on the steps of the …Tue Oct 23 2012 - 01:00
'In the theatre, it's the quiet urgency of love that works for me'I WAS IN France last week to see le Théâtre du Radeau, a company that occupies an old foundry as grim as a derelict convent …Tue Oct 16 2012 - 01:00
'Another morning. I avoided being drowned in melancholy'IT WAS one of those mornings when nothing seemed to matter except the shortening day, the cloudy sky, and the falling leaves, …Tue Oct 9 2012 - 01:00
'The sound of a dying pig didn't put children off their dinner'JOE BRADY was having an open day on his organic farm near Lough Owel last week, and when I got to the farm gate his mother said…Tue Oct 2 2012 - 01:00
I had mice the size of Tony Soprano in the house‘AUTUMN IS come early,” I said, because the chestnut trees were already yellow near the riverTue Sep 25 2012 - 01:00
Everyone is born tender. It's only life that hardens us upI’VE JUST discovered Chopin. His music is exquisiteTue Sep 18 2012 - 01:00
To be sick is human, to eat fresh-cut chips is divineThe surfing sylphs and the corncrake’s call chart a journey to my childhood holidays: it’s Bundoran revisitedTue Sep 11 2012 - 01:00
I had two choices: book a romantic hotel or dig the potatoesI could choose between a desperate act of escape from real life and a ritual that would allow me to enter deeper into real life…Tue Sep 4 2012 - 01:00
'It was the bodhrán player who frightened me most'I WAS IN bed for a week recovering from the Eleanor Shanley gig at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in CavanTue Aug 28 2012 - 01:00
Why romance can get up the noses of young bulliesI’ve enjoyed listening to older people’s memories and the lessons they’ve taught me about everyone’s lifeTue Aug 21 2012 - 01:00
Swimming with the desperate Drumshanbo pikeI WAS LOOKING for a newspaper. That’s the only reason I was in the bar at lunchtimeTue Aug 14 2012 - 01:00
Nation's malaise visible in venom flung at QuinnThe Irish are angry but also psychotically ill. Why else target a man who really did his best?Sat Aug 4 2012 - 01:00
Life is a song, and we have one chance to sing it wellONCE UPON a time there was a fisherman who caught a pike.Tue Jul 31 2012 - 01:00
The perfect summers of my mother's lifeI WAS WAITING for the train to Dublin one morning last week and began thinking of my motherTue Jul 17 2012 - 01:00
Who needs tonic when you can just play dead?I HAD A part in a movie last week. Not a big part. I was required to lie in a coffin and pretend I was deadTue Jul 10 2012 - 01:00
Lace in the launderette, languor by laburnumsI SAW TWO OLD men in Bray last week sitting outside a coffee shop, their walking sticks on the ground, as they chatted like jolly…Tue Jul 3 2012 - 01:00
Our head of state and the queen of theatreTHE PRESIDENT WAS in Poland for the soccer, and when Ireland scored he jumped up and threw his hands in the air, delighted with…Tue Jun 26 2012 - 01:00
The Sky is blue, but in the heart is rain and darknessIt comes in sudden downpours of anxiety that no amount of Macs could weatherTue Jun 19 2012 - 01:00
It's a year since I fell into depressionI remember a wise man telling me one time that the human soul is like water; we must allow ourselves to be poured from one vessel…Tue Jun 12 2012 - 01:00
Men and the art of motorcycle masculinityYou can get that motor running and get out on the highway, but while one man’s way of riding a motorbike can be enviably cool…Tue Jun 5 2012 - 01:00
Beware the black cars, bearing politiciansAs my tea leaves stood soaking in a mug of boiling water, I finally relaxedTue May 29 2012 - 01:00
Enfold her with the tenderness of angelsI COULDN’T SLEEP and I wanted a drink of water. But the French woman was lying on the floor in the loungeTue May 22 2012 - 01:00
I want to be alone - but not lonelyI’m a great believer in solitude, living like a monk in quiet contemplationTue May 15 2012 - 01:00
'That was the moment when the dream of a liberal church died'Making an order to cut down cherry trees that another man had cultivated with love; that’s a real storyTue May 8 2012 - 01:00
'It was as cheerful as a beauty clinic. Everyone except me was wearing a mask'The prostate is one of those things men prefer to hide from women, especially those they loveTue May 1 2012 - 01:00
The power of a bedside mannerI’M GOING into hospital again this week, but I’m not too depressed, because I always meet interesting people on the trolleys…Tue Apr 24 2012 - 01:00
Why my heart burns when the weather forecast is on the radioMY THERAPIST SAYS that there is something divided in each of us. And I agree. There are two parts; at least there are in me.Tue Apr 17 2012 - 01:00
Back in the ballroom for a last danceA visit to the dancehall of my youth reminds me of a time when we were all too busy jiving, quick-stepping and smoking to contemplate…Tue Apr 10 2012 - 01:00
Of mothers and the feminine side of thingsI grew up envying the others – the rough boys and the fearsome whelps who could release their wild inner-self at the drop of …Tue Apr 3 2012 - 01:00
As shifty as drug dealers: a murder of crows on my chimneyA trip to the Burren give me a chance to commune with angels and ghosts - and takes my mind off the cackling intruders trying…Tue Mar 27 2012 - 01:00
Losing your place at the centre of the cosmosSpring brings Chinese poetry, bowls of tea and a new hope of recovery from my depressionTue Mar 20 2012 - 00:00
Benefits of good dung not to be sniffed at‘Make your fortune far away, but marry on the dunghillTue Mar 13 2012 - 00:00
In the perfect focus of the film camera's eyeI WAS IN a community hall in Leitrim last week with a film crewTue Mar 6 2012 - 00:00
Hope for love is always around an Irish cornerI WAS IN the Abbey Theatre last week for a felicitation to celebrate the work of Tom McIntyre, the distinguished poet and playwright…Tue Feb 28 2012 - 00:00