I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.

If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.

I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican.

You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

It's a big con job. We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it is a dreary little dump most of the time.

I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.

Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.

Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

If you are a writer you're at home, which means you're out of touch. You have to make excuses to get out there and look at how the world is changing.

It's great meeting children because you never know what they will say.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

I can't cook to save my life but I can bake a flour-less chocolate-hazelnut tort with a spicy caramel sauce.

The past was a bridge that looked solid and sturdy, but once you were on it, you saw that it extended only far enough to strand you, to suspend you between loss and longing with nowhere to go at all.

I was very troubled, yes. Me and my brother both - we were troubled and troublemakers.

I have three kids. I was blessed with very supportive parents and some close friends, and the people closest to me are my inspiration.

I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.

I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can't DO EVERYTHING I want.

I'm not really sure what people's preconceived notions are. I don't look at the gossip websites - it's unhealthy and I think it's a large part of what drives people in L.A. crazy.

I was thinking." "I see no evidence of that, Jared." Kami said.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.