I like naming characters.

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.

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

Volvo has one weakness, and that is in the interior design. They have not adapted to the Chinese people's perception of luxury when it comes to the interior design, and this has to be addressed.

Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

All statements about the hydrides of boron earlier than 1912, when Stock began to work upon them, are untrue.

At the end of the day, things don't get better unless you continue to invest in your workforce. And I've not heard any Republican talk about education and the investment in the future workforce.

From the cradle to the grave she is subject to the power and control of man. Father, guardian, or husband, one conveys her like some piece of merchandise over to the other.

Spiritual knowledge is the experience of enlightenment, and requires an understanding of the inner-most workings of the enlightenment cycle.

It is said that love is blind. Friendship, on the other hand, is clairvoyant.

You do not fail in life, you only produce results, and you have the right to learn and grow from any results that you produce.