When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.

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.

Seek goodness and be goodness. Seek beauty and be beauty. Seek love and be love

No man goes before his time - unless the boss leaves early.

Heart has always been a rock band. It's always been hard-rock.

I think a lot of actors take on fun roles and then they're lazy or flippant with them. I just can't do that.

There is a shrine in the temple of age, where lie forever embalmed the memories of such as have deserved well of their country and their race.

I'm a recovering optimist.

Math is one of my favorite subjects.

I just don't watch a lot of TV.

I don't know if it's good to be stuck at one place. I'm probably too close to home on that. Because that can happen-where I'm not the best judge of my own work.

It is typical for implicit status hierarchies of influence and esteem to emerge in interpersonal encounters, especially those that are goal oriented.