Irish Quotes

I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.

For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.

But everyone gets burnt, don't they? Certain things are outside of your control. I suppose the only thing you can learn as a director is to not put yourself into situations where it can get outside of your control. And that's what happened.

And I think I often choose to do something because it's quite different from what I've done before.

We live in an epoch of denudation.

The sediments of the past are many miles in collective thickness: yet the feeble silt of the rivers built them all from base to summit.

That the sea is one of the most beautiful and magnificent sights in Nature, all admit.

Geological age plays the same part in our views of the duration of the universe as the Earth's orbital radius does in our views of the immensity of space.

All great results in our universe are founded in motions and forces the most minute.

Ireland is where strange tales begin and happy endings are possible.

We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists.

There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.

Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn't sit half way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little.

There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them.

Marriage is a custom brought about by women who then proceed to live off men and destroy them, completely enveloping the man in a destructive cocoon or eating him away like a poisonous fungus on a tree.

Many kids turn to selling drugs. It's not a good career choice, but they see it as a way to get money.

Jesus is just a word I use to swear with.

I often sit back and think, I wish I'd done that, and find out later that I already have.

There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we will.

The Christian churches were offered two things: the spirit of Jesus and the idiotic morality of Paul, and they rejected the higher inspiration... Following Paul, we have turned the goodness of love into a fiend and degraded the crowning impulse of our being into a capital sin.

Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind.

Sex is the gateway to life.

Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction.

I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers.

All the faults of the age come from Christianity and journalism. Christianity, of course, but why journalism?

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.

Sometimes you give birth to something or you're part of a team that gives birth to an idea, and it grows and has a whole life of its own, and you feel grateful. It's just so humbling.

Sometimes travelling really intensely for a long time is like having a continuous nervous breakdown.