I don't know what kind of swag I'd get if I were extra Irish. It would just be, like, extra potatoes. Or like a free pint of Guinness.

I think if my child died I would prefer it if I were dead.

Learning is the most important thing, no mater how you do it, or where you do it, or who you do it with.

The written word can be powerful and beautiful - but films transport us to another place in a way that even the most evocative words never can.

I try as best as I can to have a normal life. People recognise you, of course, and that's very strange. But I sort of leave my working life behind when I go home. That's my other world.

Everyone thinks I'm ethereal. But I'm not like that, you know. I'm not ethereal. Well, I might have a little bit of that quality to me, that 'old soul' thing, but I'm not ethereal.

If you don't have eyebrows, you don't really have a face.

The 1916 uprising was kind of the most important rebellion in Ireland's fight for independence that had been going on for 700 years. So it's a very important moment in history for us.

I've never really felt like I was a child actor. Just an actor who happened to be quite young.

My name means freedom in Irish.

It's too distracting to read about yourself. You want to be perfect and you want everyone to love you, and that's never going to happen.

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.

You can say the same thing nicely.

Reading great books always gives me the worst sleeping disorders.

I started writing nonfiction because nonfiction is well-suited to subjects that, if you wrote them as fiction, people would say, "I don't believe this. This is a little outlandish".

The older you get, the more you should learn to love life and appreciate the beauty that comes with age.

I've finished running from you, Redd. It's time for you to run." --Alyss

It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved.

McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business.

Freedom has never been free... I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, die gladly, if that would make a better life for them.

It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.