What matters is the imaginative truth.

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.

Life is a race against time

Statements don't exist by themselves. Just like people, they are in relationship with one another.

Sometimes your greatest strength can emerge as a weakness if the context changes.

It's been TV and a lot of independent films. I'm so happy and blessed to have all these opportunities. But I'm also working on somebody else's project.

Purpose without virtue is vanity.

Who wants to be normal when you can be unique?

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.

In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness.

We forget that the world is what we imagine it to be. We stop being the sun and become, instead, the pool of water reflecting it.

Love is the spiritual magnetism that draws men together, for the working of miracles.