To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.

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.

You obviously don't have my soul or you wouldn't be trying to make deals.

I take care of my flowers and my cats. And enjoy food. And that's living.

Ours must be the first age whose great goal on a nonmaterial plane is not fulfillment but adjustment.

The wealth of nations is men not silk and cotton and gold.

To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.

Who are next to knaves? Those that converse with them.

I think everybody should be "pro-love."

So the characters that I choose, I like to make sure that they have depth and that they have some sort of bite. It's more fun.

Failing to grapple with complexity actually turns out to be a pretty bad life strategy.

To play for your country is the best thing that can happen.