I’ll always be somebody who spends a lot of time in a lot of places; that’s just always going to be the way. But I try to spend as much time in Ireland as I can, because it’s lovely, and it feels like a release.
I’m a Londoner, and I feel I can’t live anywhere but London, but I feel more connected to Ireland as a country. I ‘get’ Irish people and the humour here, which is more subtle.
What Ireland needs now above all else is peace.
My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
Ireland never lacked the capacity to feed its people. During the entire ‘great famine,’ the island continued to produce massive amounts of beef and grain. The Irish just couldn’t afford to buy any of it due to the enforcement of rack-renting, high taxation, and suppression of manufactures.
In Britain, politicians who openly discuss their spirituality are about as welcome as Jehovah’ s Witnesses on the doorstep, and the British associate the mixture of politics and religion as a heady cocktail best reserved for the mass irrationality of Northern Ireland, Iran, Kashmir, and the Middle East.
The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
My point is there’s a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It’s a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.
We are a trading nation, and we are trading with Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.
My dad was a labourer and my mum had exactly the same job as Noel Gallagher’s mum – she was a dinner lady at our local school. Everyone comes over from Ireland and they get the same jobs.
I went to Paris, I went to France, I went to England, I went to Ireland. In my mind, I can go wherever I wanted to go. I left death row every day.
I’d never had any problem finding inspiration; Ireland was always just there, you know? All this richness of culture was there to tap into.
We’re nondenominational. I come from Northern Ireland, and we’ve had religious wars for years. I didn’t want to create an illusion that my God is better than your God. So our show is a spiritual show, not a religious show.
My family are very happy that I’m playing with Ireland. It’s my dad’s side, and he’s really, really proud. He wants me to play for Ireland, and I’m really happy to play for Ireland.
Today, Church policy in Ireland is to report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. It recognises the Gardai and H.S.E. as those with responsibility for investigating such allegations and that any Church investigation should not take place until the investigation by the civil authorities has been completed.
My first record was made in Termonfeckin, which is a small town on the north-east coast of Ireland. I had been in London, but it didn’t click. So, at home, I didn’t think about making something, just whether something could be made. There was no grand plan.
My grandfather was a really, really tough no-nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real stars, the real heroes.
It was in a mist the Tuatha de Danaan, the people of the gods of Dana, or as some called them, the Men of Dea, came through the air and the high air to Ireland.
I actually don’t think Ireland has a summer. I never experienced a summer there. It was just so wet.
Floral emblems have been often adopted. The houses of York and Lancaster had their roses, the Bourbons of France, the fleur-de-lis, Scotland her thistle, and Ireland her shamrock.
Time flies. It seems like just yesterday I was playing my first game against Ireland, when I came off the bench, full of energy and flying into tackles, even though I couldn’t tackle back then.
I remember being very free in Ireland.
Sometimes, there’s not an honest engagement of Ireland in Hollywood movies.
I committed a cardinal sin as a kid. I never spoke, and my mother thought there was something seriously wrong with me. A silent child is regarded as a problem in Ireland, and I just read all the time.
When I was a senior in high school, I went to Ireland to study Irish Gaelic. And after one semester at Trinity College, I went way out to the west coast of Ireland and rented a little house by myself.
Stop at home. Arm for Ireland. Fight for Ireland and no other land.
St. Patrick, bringing the religion to Ireland, this is what we should celebrate.
There was nobody in the city I came from – Cork, Ireland – that I could link up with to teach me the guitar.
World War One is an important part of Ireland’s multi-layered history during which tens of thousands Irish people lost their lives.
I am an atheist. I was born a Catholic, but after I had traveled to Northern Ireland with some Catholic friends, and we had a horrible experience with the English Protestant police, I lost all taste for formal religion.
People were so keen to get investment. In those days, there was quite significant unemployment in Northern Ireland, and that had been the general pattern in Northern Ireland for many, many years.
In ‘A Scandalous Woman,’ the eventually distraught narrator watches as her high-spirited friend is beaten down – literally and figuratively – by Ireland’s pious customs.
My dad was a keen actor when he was young; my auntie is heavily involved in amateur dramatics back in Northern Ireland, and my great aunt was a woman called Greer Garson.
We really need to come behind and press for marriage equality in Northern Ireland.
You can get on with your job. I’m going to get on with mine. And mine is to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, that’s what they expect from me and I’m not going to be deflected by interesting academic or media speculation or attempts to take the whole debate back.
I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself.
My partner Dan Ireland wants me to direct, and I read a lot of scripts – some good enough that I could see myself. But then it’s like, so what? Who cares? Let someone else direct it.
There I was – 20 years old, living in Ireland, and I’d never heard the word ‘venture capitalist.’ But I’d said that I wanted a job that involved a lot of negotiation, a lot of yelling at people on the phone, and for it to be high-risk, high-reward.
Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can’t be too optimistic.
I hated school in Ireland.
On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.
But if I ever fight in Northern Ireland again, I want it to be at Windsor Park.
Northern Ireland isn’t actually part of Great Britain, but we still want it to be part of ‘Sofa Watch.’
I went up for the first time when I was 18. It’s a great place – I love L.A.; I mean, in Ireland it just rains all the time, it’s crap weather, so it’s nice to go to L.A. where it’s just sunshine every day, and then it’s kinda easier to live a kinda healthy lifestyle.
I don’t think Ireland has really embraced me, but it is not really for me to say. Obviously, people shouldn’t embrace me just because I’m Irish, but it is where I’m from. I’m extremely proud to be Irish.
In the U.K. and Ireland, crowd-work is a big thing. It shows you how funny someone would be if you met them off-stage. Americans don’t care if you’re funny off-stage. They want to see the writing; they want to see the work you did.
I spent a day in a neck brace on a hospital trolley after falling from a horse and cart in Ireland. All the nurses thought I was a traveler, which made me laugh. Who else comes into a hospital saying they’ve fallen off a horse and cart?
‘Vikings’ is filmed in Ireland, and 400 people get jobs from that show. Their economy is not that good, so I’m proud of what we’ve done and will do anything to help that show.
The way forward is by building political support for republican and democratic objectives across Ireland and by winning support for these goals internationally.
Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States.
I hope that at the end of the seven years, people will say that I have been of some inspirational value to them at home in terms of inclusiveness and abroad, I look forward to representing Ireland.
There were no wrestling schools in Ireland. It was completely unheard of.
I’ve been on ‘Jay Leno,’ and everyone likes Jay, but being on that show is a really boring afternoon. I sincerely like Jay, but I wouldn’t want his job, because I’d have to interview Kathy Ireland, and there’s nothing there I’d want to know.
All the girls over there in Ireland are well versed in American country music. Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline are like king and queen over there.
I traveled to Ireland to research ‘Sandcastles,’ to visit the coastline where my ancestors looked toward America, the tiny town they once loved so much, and the docks from which they sailed toward their dreams of building a better life for their family. The answers I found on that journey are woven through the novel.
