It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.
I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70.
The fact is that most ‘Irish-Americans’, in spite of dropping the word ‘Irish’ into half of all sentences, couldn’t find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland.
The twentieth century had produced a literature in Ireland that kept a tense distance from the sources of faith – and for good reason. Irish writing had suffered a terrible censorship in the twentieth century.
Plays by people like Martin McDonagh and Brian Friel attract huge audiences, not because they’re Irish, but because they’re brilliant plays.
The great thing about the beach they use in ‘Home & Away’ is that they can’t kick you off it, so there were always tons of Irish people on it all the time.
If Britain votes to leave the European Union, then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people.
I receive huge support from Irish and British sports fans alike and it is greatly appreciated. Likewise I feel I have a great affinity with the American sports fans. I play most of my golf in the U.S. nowadays and I am incredibly proud to have won the U.S. Open and U.S. PGA Championship in the last two years.
The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.
I was brought up Irish, where there was room for my own private world.
I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American. They both have good skin.
Patrick Pearse – who set the events of 1916 in motion when he read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin – is not exactly an unfamiliar name to the Miramichi Irish.
My brother and I were born in an Irish county called Tipperary. We were both very math- and science-inclined in high school. My dad trained as an electrical engineer, and my mom is in microbiology.
I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It’s understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, the bridges, the tunnels.
I think the world’s a little smaller these days. With the Internet and the availability of people, the pool of English speaking actors – not just American actors, but Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, Irish. We’re all up for grabs.
I grew up in an environment in Birmingham that was really multicultural, with black kids, Irish kids, Indian kids.
But let’s just say, I’m Irish. I grew up in the 1950s. Religion had a very tight iron fist.
Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?
In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy – you can be arrested for it. It’s risky asking people for money in public. So it’s not like it’s a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.
I look Italian, but I act Irish.
Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: ‘No Irish Need Apply.’
I love Ireland. I’ll always be 100pc Irish. I get really excited when I go to Sligo; it’s my home.
I went to Irish dance when I was four. I was playing the tin whistle when I was five. So I think certain things are bred into you.
Father Ted’ would be impossible to remake it in America. The whole situation of being Irish and being a priest in Ireland is so different than anything else in America.
I try to attack all races and creeds, except the Irish. Clearly they are closest to the angels and don’t deserve abuse. But the others have it coming.
I was freelancing for years in Cork and around. I also wrote freelance pieces for ‘The Irish Times.’
I have always thought of myself as being Northern Irish because that’s what I am.
The English treatment of the Irish was appalling. It was absolutely appalling.
The whole world has American dreams. This country has people from all parts of the world. We have Irish who live here, we have Brazilians.
Trash talk? Smack talk? This is an American term that makes me laugh. I simply speak the truth. I’m an Irish man.
They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.
I’m most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It’s easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we’ve got Irish heritage where I come from.
I don’t see myself as either Irish or American, I’m a New Yorker.
I come from an alcoholic Irish background – I know where I was going! But I met my wife and started to practise Buddhism, which is a levelling experience for me, and there hasn’t been a day I’ve missed in 40 years. I apply it to everything – to my work and relationships. I try to be a compassionate person.
Years later, when I was working as a trolley wally in a supermarket, I tackled the boredom by talking to the customers in as many different accents as I could manage. I started with one that I didn’t think would alert any suspicion – generic Asian – then moved on to Irish, Welsh, Australian and American.
Let everyone leave all the guns – British guns and Irish guns – outside the door.
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’m black and Cuban, Australian and Irish, and like most people in America, I’m someone whose roots come from somewhere else. I’m a mixed race, first-generation American.
My father named me Kelli because ‘Kelli O’Hara’ just sounded so Irish.
There was a big thing in the Behan family of achieving and wanting to be something special. There was a big drive in the family, even though it was poor and working class, to do something important, to contribute something to Irish culture. He certainly achieved that in a spectacular way.
I know this sounds a bit mad, but I always take a tiny green cut-out leprechaun – about the size of a fingernail – with me. My mother gave it to me because we’re Irish. She’s adamant that it brings good luck.
So many Irish actors overplay that modesty because they’re afraid people will judge them and say, ‘The state of yer man, he thinks he’s great,’ or whatever.
I’m Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m Italian on Columbus Day. I’m a New Yorker every day.
I couldn’t fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.
I can’t think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.
This first-generation narrative keeps happening over and over and over again, whether it was Irish or Jewish or our community, South Asians, Japanese-Americans, Mexican-Americans. We’ve all gone through this sort of bridge, and it will continue to happen.
There are writers, and I know some of them, who are very disciplined. Who write, like, four pages a day, every day. And it doesn’t matter if their dog got run over by a car that day, or they won the Irish sweepstakes. I’m not one of those writers.
The economy in Ireland has been rampaging ahead for the last 15 years. Barring an international, political or natural catastrophe, things can only get better for the Irish.
I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds there were not mine. I never felt them. I liked how open in most ways Catalan nationalism was, compared to Irish nationalism. I disliked the violence and cruelty in Ireland.
My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers – because there is something mystical in the air. There’s always this cloudy, moody sky and it’s challenging.
Perhaps our Irish friends should not so completely turn their backs on their historical dishes, no matter how many jokes they might have to endure.
Irish politicians are very accessible to the public, just the messenger boys for the local constituency.
The Irish job was something that had to be sorted out.
I grew up with this idea that songwriters had a great job. My family was Irish Catholic, so if you became a priest or a songwriter, you were golden.
The history of the Welsh, the Irish, the Highlanders, is just the same as that of the Gauls, one of internecine feud, no political cohesion, no capacity for merging private interests, forgetting private grudges for a patriotic cause.
I printed a list of Irish names from the Internet and my husband, Dave, saw Finley on the list. I really liked it but didn’t want to scare Dave off with my enthusiasm. So I used a little reverse psychology and let him think it was his idea.
