"Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while."

"There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true."

"This whole tribal loyalty seems to have gone."

"I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it."

"Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time."

"My mother taught me to read."

"Theater dates very quickly."

"The energy released by it is enormous and it becomes quite addictive, the power between the audience and the actor."

"I just think that things should be allowed to run their course, and not turned into a Disney ride."

"There's something about the Irish that is remarkable."

"I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them."

"The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain."

"A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano."

"I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born."

"There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing."

"So I just play the character, I play the lines."

"I certainly had no intention of playing a man."

"I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland."

"Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy."

"I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity."

"Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th."

"Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history."

"The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns."

"To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have."

"People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera."

"Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way."