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

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.

I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

it's the thing you fear most that walks beside you all the time.

You'll still get guys with an array of badges to demonstrate their importance, but that just excludes people. I think fandom is more inclusive now.

I'm attracted to playing people who aren't necessarily straightforward.

Life is not outside of you. You are life.

The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

a fully belly is little worth where the mind is starved.

If you can get over this initial distrust that people have of strangers, you can do remarkable things.

Forget yesterday, live for today. Tomorrow will take care of itself.