shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but never yet the one true love.

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.

As we begin to internalize the technological kingdoms we have built, as we progressively become more superhuman, what will differentiate us from machinery?

If truth prevails, the contributions of a courageous physician and a brilliant engineer to the conquest of waterborne disease will still be remembered in another hundred years.

Can you imagine, in 2030, taking a space cruise on the very ship that carried the first human beings to Mars? I can't believe that people wouldn't line up for that possibility.

We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.

How the hell can a person go to work in the morning And come home in the evening and have nothing to say

I always say "if you are afraid of them (the unborn), give them to me. Please, don't kill them."

Cultures that don't laugh at themselves are cults.

I refuse to be beaten in any way shape or form, so I'm gonna beat this too.

If you have to lie, cheat, steal, obstruct and bully to get your point across, it must not be a point capable of surviving on its own merits.

Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.