... Hope is at the bottom of the Pandora's box of Irish troubles, and I believe proudly and firmly in the ultimate destinies of my country.

O, the red rose may be fair, And the lily statelier; But my shamrock, one in three Takes the very heart of me!

The life in which nothing happens goes the fastest, because it has no landmarks.

The kind need kindness most of all.

The trouble with the Irish question always has been that it was an English question.

There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what would otherwise be an impertinence delightful.

Often our bad moments are self-propelled ... And the drama is almost exclusively within our heads and hearts.

I have often heard it said that the Irish are too ready to forgive. It is a noble failing.

I have always believed that hair is a very sure index of character.

It's a strange thing now how people will know they're dying themselves when no one else could suspect anything wrong at all with them.

It is a horrible demoralizing thing to be a lawyer. You look for such low motives in everyone and everything.

If they say you will fall, rise. If they say you will fail, succeed. If they say you will break, kept it together. If they say you will deteriorate, flourish.

Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.

Immigrants provide skills that we simply cannot afford to do without. They have contributed hugely to Britain's success.

Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.

A poet's mission is to make others confound fiction and reality in order to render them, for an hour, mysteriously happy.

If we don't figure out global warming, we're not going to be able to be here.

In every growing church you will find leadership that is not afraid to believe God.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. There is work, there is life, and there is no balance.

I just want to push the barriers and see what I can do and how far I can go. I am just determined and driven.

When you're a kid and you're in a classroom, anybody would die to be hanging out in London or having their sixteenth birthday in Japan.