Irish Quotes

My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine

Look at the Coen brothers. All their minor characters are as interesting as their protagonists. If the smaller characters are well-written, the whole world of the film becomes enriched. It's not the size of the thing, but the detail.

It's interesting going between small parts and then bigger roles where you carry the film. If the writing is good, and if the people involved have integrity, then you'll do it, even if it's only five minutes on screen.

I'm aware now over the last 5 or 10 years that when you do an accent, you really have to kind of get down to the nitty gritty and go into the phonetics of it, if necessary. Find out not just the sounds but the rhythms and the music - or lack thereof - in a particular accent.

I think it was a possibility, I think we're all kind of delusional like that, we think that we can all carry on being who we are without bending ourselves to make ourselves acceptable and expect someone to come along and see to us and rescue to us.

I think every character actor at some stage likes to carry a film. It can be extremely liberating to just come in for a scene or two and do your thing. But I find it frustrating if I'm just doing little bits here and there for too long.

I started hitching about the country when I was 16 or 17 years old. I found the music that was played around the country - Irish music - had a particular resonance.

I loved teaching. And I always used to say that acting was just something I did purely on my own terms, and that if I had to make a living from it there would be too much pressure.

Everyone's waiting for the seventh book, and looking at each other saying, 'Oh, I wonder will I be in the running?

I don't want people poking around in my private stuff. They've no business in it. My work is what I give to people, that's my job, and that's where it stops.

I don't plan in terms of career ambitions. The only career ambition I have is to work with people who are going to bring you up and elevate your performance. They'll let you know things that you didn't know already and bring you places that you might not have gotten to otherwise.

People didn't know until I said it publicly that I had a nasty side. It was never obvious to the fans. I never lost my head, you see. Never got sent off.

Now let me say that Matt Busby was a great manager and Manchester United wouldn't be where they are without him. He was a god at the club, but he wasn't a god to me. Football is like that sometimes.

I'd rather play in front of a full house than an empty crowd.

I was a creative player, but I got some bad injuries early on and I decided that if this was a jungle we were playing in then it's better to be a lion than a lamb.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

Music is something I must do, business is something I need to do, and Africa is something I have to do. That's the way it breaks down in my life.

Music can't change the world.

Men who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they're left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humour to try and draw attention to their kids.

It's like you asked me about the depression thing: you grope towards an understanding of whatever it is your going through, and it's not personal, there are forces in play around you, and you seek to understand them and that way you can go on.

If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.

I'm sure I'm very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

I'd always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.

I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.

I do think I feel it but you don't think you are cause at a certain time you are no age but you don't think you are anything. You feel the life you have lived. I feel that. It's been a long fifty years.

Everything that's rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching.

Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone.

But I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I've several friends just haven't made it by taking Prozac.

Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it's empirically so.

90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What's going on? What's the great discontent at the heart of it?