Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.

Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me.

Writing is like carrying a fetus.

never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty.

... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.

Promiscuity is the death of love.

I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand, but tell it.

Accept, Acknowledge and Awake.

The head which does not turn backwards towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love.

Ambition is destruction only competence matters.

My first influence obviously was Picasso.

It was lucky that Ralph [Fiennes] is someone who understands both film and theater and we were able to understand that scene so well before we took it to the set.

What the public expects to encounter in an actress passed 70 is the sum of her experience, not her beauty.

Those that have an attitude of service towards others are the beauty of society.

I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry.

'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay trees in our country are all wither'd.