From day one working in TV, I have been very conscious of the way the Irish are represented, In every show I’ve been involved in I read the script, take out the Irishisms right away and say, ‘I’ll supply those’.
Being Irish, I always had this love of words.
Add a teaspoon of single cream, say, to a sauce just before serving to give it a touch of extra smoothness and depth. You also need single cream to float on top of Irish coffee. And you should probably use the finest unpasteurised double cream to make syllabub.
For years, Ireland used to have a philosophy of ‘Get them in here to invest and develop in Ireland, and this will sort out our problems.’ It is good in the sense of building a trade surplus, but we also want to develop what it is that we offer ourselves and that Irish companies export abroad.
Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in ‘Old Ireland.’ It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can’t think of anything else for definite.
It has to do with the fact that Ford, for all his greatness, is an Irish egomaniac, as anyone who knows him will say.
I’ve always been fascinated with Ireland, especially Northern Ireland, having lived in London in the ’80s when there was an Irish republican bombing campaign there.
I hold that the beginning of modern Irish drama was in the winter of 1898, at a school feast at Coole, when Douglas Hyde and Miss Norma Borthwick acted in Irish in a Punch and Judy show; and the delighted children went back to tell their parents what grand curses ‘An Craoibhin’ had put on the baby and the policeman.
What Irish person doesn’t love the Eurovision?
Because it was my first time acting in English, everyone on set was difficult to understand. It was a mix of Scottish, Irish, British and American English. To understand a Scottish accent or an Irish accent was so hard.
Have you ever heard of Irish, Poles, Germans, Italians and Jews being integrated? They go anywhere and just enjoy their rights. Why call it integration when black folks do the same thing? It’s a con job.
As far as Irish writers being great, I think the fact that there have been two languages in Ireland for a very long time; there has obviously been a shared energy between those two languages.
I’m a whole lot more than just Spanish or Irish or whatever, but definitely, it’s given me help. It’s given me a push, and I’m very proud of my Spanish heritage.
I’m a big fan of the Irish accent. After a couple of drinks, I start to get a bit of an Irish lilt, too.
I feel warm toward my Irish side, but I don’t know the country or the people. Hearing a traditional Irish fiddle, I feel very connected to Ireland, but that’s a nostalgia many people feel who aren’t Irish at all.
It’s true of Irish Catholic families. They’re big on story telling and big on saving stories from one generation to the next.
I live in Dublin, God knows why. There are greatly more congenial places I could have settled in – Italy, France, Manhattan – but I like the climate here, and Irish light seems to be essential for me and for my writing.
That’s what the holidays are for – for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them. Isn’t that the Irish way?
My mom is Filipino and my dad is half Russian and half Irish.
To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.
I’ve gone into auditions, and I think they have an assumption about me when they see my photo, and then I open my mouth, and they say, ‘Where exactly are you from? And you were born in Ethiopia? But you’re Irish, but you also kind of sound English. That’s really strange.’
I’m Irish in the mythic, romantic sense, but in the living sense, I’m a Londoner.
I just wasn’t cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I’m more of an Irish Setter Dad.
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.
I come from an Irish Catholic family, and hell-raising is part of the DNA.
I love battles. I think it’s part of the Irish in me.
I had great faith in Irish actors, that they’d be hip to the whole theatre thing, and they are. I had no illusions of coming over here as some kind of big shot. It’s been a learning experience for me too.
I’m not Irish. Just because I have red hair doesn’t mean I’m a lucky charm, you know?
We learn to laugh from the cultures that suffered most – from the Russians, Poles, and Irish – not from Sweden or France (the French go for Jerry Lewis – enough said).
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.
All my people are from Ireland. I was born in Manchester, but I am Irish.
My family, they’re story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren’t allowed to watch TV while we ate – we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.
I would love to go back to any time in European history, especially in Irish history, to the second or third century, prior to the arrival of Christianity when Paganism flourished. I can always go back there in my imagination, of course. It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s a form of time travel, I suppose.
Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.
Poets, I think, are born. You can’t teach it. It’s genetic – the circumstances of how you were raised… and there’s probably some Irish in your blood lines.
Westlife earnt millions. We were on the ‘Irish Times’ Rich List. And then… I’m not!
Well, I did go to Irish dancing lessons as a kid, but I was slapped and never went again.
Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure Scottish-English settlers around Rochester.
I love oatmeal. To me, it’s not boring. I agree that ordinary oatmeal is very boring, but not the steel-cut Irish kind – the kind that pops in your mouth when you bite into it in little glorious bursts like a sort of gummy champagne.
I’ve been a Leeds fan for as long as I can remember. When you are about five or six, you adopt a team – obviously, I didn’t grow up in Leeds. I grew up in a small town on the Irish border, and most of the people my age were Leeds fans, both then and now.
I like that kind of weather. Constant drizzle. At the Olympic trials in 2012, my mom was, like, ‘It’s pouring rain out there, Mary. You shouldn’t even notice it. You’re Irish.’
I’m Irish; I grew up in Ireland, and it’s impossible to separate my background from who I am as a filmmaker.
I’m honoured and delighted to be named the ‘Irish Times’/Irish Sports Council Sportswoman of the Year 2014. This has been an amazing year for me and for Irish women in sport, and I would like to congratulate all the finalists in their respective fields who have excelled at major sporting events.
I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music – I really didn’t start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.
English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish football gains so much from being in Europe. Clubs and fans all benefit from European action, laws and funding.
‘Ulysses’ is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.
The last dog I had was an Irish wolfhound – now that is a dog. Rather spoils a person for a lesser canine, that is, anything under a hundredweight.
There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.
There is that much to be done that no select or small portion of people can do; only the greater mass of the Irish nation will ensure the achievement of a Socialist Republic, and this can only be done by hard work and sacrifice.
The way I see it is that all the ol’ guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn’t be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn’t be Chinese or Japanese.
When I was growing up, for example, everybody on our street was Irish. And all the girls did Irish step dancing. It was pre-Lord of the Dance – it was before anybody knew what gillys were – but we did, and there was such pride among the members of my family and people I grew up with.
I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions… the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.
The first play I wrote was called ‘Twenty-five.’ It was played by our company in Dublin and London, and was adapted and translated into Irish and played in America.
The films that I’ve made with my company Irish DreamTime are close to my heart. ‘The Greatest’ being one of them, and ‘Evelyn’ being another.
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.
