I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.

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.

The only people who fear death are the ones who haven't lived.

To heed the discovery is the key

Aleksar Greene was a boy I used to play with, he was my imaginary friend.

I don't need anybody to market or promote me. If people don't want to hear this music, then it's not for them. You cannot please everybody.

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.

The measure of a man is not how many servants he has but how many men he serves .

I've tried to lead a straight, clean life, not set any kind of a bad example.

I want to change as many lives as I can, I want to help as many people as I can and I want to let people know that serving and doing for people is not outdated and certainly not overrated!

I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.

As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.