Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's part of any endeavour, not just writing.

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.

Hecuba had the mistaken notion, just like my poor mama, that all a girl had to do was to get married and all her problems were solved overnight.

The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune.

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.

Energy and imagination are the springboards to wealth creation.

How small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.

If a body catch a body coming through the rye.

I'd rather give up my ears than my eyes, which might sound unusual for a musician.

In a word I was a pioneer, and therefore had to blaze my own trail.

Paul Scholes is just fantastic. When you play alongside him, you realise what a special talent he is.