Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.

In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.

The divine moment is holy.

He’d often ignored his uncle’s teachings about gentlemanly behavior, but one stricture he’d always abided by: no man worth his salt took advantage of a woman.

Where in the Bible does it say I have to drive a Honda?.

Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it.

We can now manipulate images to such an extrodinary extent that there's no lie you cannot tell.

In life learn art, in the artwork learn life. If you see the one correctly you see the other also.

Somebody who knows what they're doing, who has a good track record, they come across as very articulate, bright and looking for a challenge - that's absolutely my kind of hire.

It was probably the biggest accomplishment of my life.

All you can hold in your cold dead hand is what you have given away.

In Europe, it's more common to hear aggressive dance tracks on the radio.