Tom Paulin

Again and again, I find something eerie in many Irish occasions - the unrelenting whiteness, the emotional tribal attachments, the violent prejudices lurking beneath apparently pleasant social surfaces, the cosy smugness of belonging.

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school.

I studied psychology for a couple of years as a personal hobby, so you start learning about people and listening to your intuition, like when you you're feeling that people are not being entirely straight with you.