Dublin-born Sebastian Barry, 71, has been publishing novels since 1982, but it's his latest revelation that's truly stopping clocks: at his age, sex is 'somewhere between a memory and an ambition.' Groundbreaking stuff, we know.

Barry, whose 2005 and 2008 novels A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture were Booker-shortlisted (three others made the longlist), has twice won the Costa book of the year and served as laureate for Irish fiction. Tomorrow he'll discuss his new novel, The Newer World, at London's Queen's Park book festival - presumably fielding questions about his moussaka recipe. He's married with three children and lives in County Wicklow, where he presumably contemplates the grotesqueries of old age.

When asked about happiness, Barry recalls being 'purely and unconsciously' happy on Greece's Paros at 25, when his babies were small. His greatest fear? Running out of money or time - or, one imagines, having to listen to his own snoring, which he calls his 'most unappealing habit,' now that an app allows him to hear his 'devastating din.'

Barry's self-assessment is 'peculiar, intense, awkward,' and he deplores his tendency not to listen, though he's training himself. If he could bring something extinct back to life, it would be 'selflessness in politicians' - a creature so rare it may never have existed.

His youthful ambition was to succeed Bob Dylan when he retired, but Dylan never obliged. The worst thing anyone said to him? In 1985, as he proudly walked into the Poetry Society for a reading, the revered John Montague asked, 'What are you doing here?' A sentiment many writers have heard, often from their own inner critic.

Barry owes his parents 'a respect for writers and a reverence for actors' - a debt he estimates would take 80,000 words to fully explain. He'd apologize to a vulnerable boy on a school tour he wasn't kind to, wishing he could go back and be a decent friend.

The greatest love of his life is his wife, Ali, who is 'a very complete person, unlike myself.' Love, he says, feels like 'a responsibility, a test, a chasm, a mountain, a non-harming strike of joy.' He's said 'I love you' without meaning it only in the sense that he didn't know he didn't.

His most overused words are 'radiant' and 'mighty' - both, he notes, good words. If he could edit his past, he'd make 'ten thousand small edits' but accepts the general text, though he wonders if one can edit out depressive episodes and 'gross stupidities.'

What would improve his life? Full mental health. What keeps him awake at night? The usual: 'Am I a good person? How will I survive the next book tour?'

His greatest achievement? 'I do make a very authentic moussaka.' And given the choice of more sex, money, or fame, he'd rather have more humanity - though he'd probably settle for a decent night's sleep. He hopes to be remembered as 'foolish but fond,' which, honestly, beats the alternative.