My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus.

Shut your eyes and see.

Absence, the highest form of presence.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.

Your mind will give back to you exactly what you put into it.

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.

People with victim mentality, consider actions such as making decisions, setting goals and achieving them to be nothing more than formidable obstacles

Don’t speak of action [effect]. Don’t serve the action [effect]. It is a result. But serve the causes [do the causes]. Nothing will be achieved unless you serve the cause.

People are perfectly capable of giving love even if they feel less confident about themselves.

Communism is in conflict with human nature.

If you do talk dirty, make sure that you enunciate because there's nothing more embarrassing than having to repeat yourself.

I think the obsession with wanting to change yourself is crazy over the top.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!

Art is more to do with observation than invention.

For me, when you have to prepare to play God, and then walking away from that, you realize just how tough God's job is. I don't want that job.