John McGahern Interview with Eamon Maher on Jesuits in Ireland website

I hadn't seen this one before - John McGahern Interview. Thanks to @Litblog for the link. Here's a beautiful observation from McGahern in the interview (he's talking about Elizabeth Reegan in his first book, The Barracks):

When you’re in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it’s around us, it’s in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we’re going to live forever, which we’re not. I think there’s a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we’re young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story  - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story. I think it’s linked to the realisation that we’re not going to live forever and that the way of saying and the language become more important than the story.