Every age, after all, must have its own aisling and dream of a better, kinder, happier, shared world.

Be proud to be a decent American rather than a wanker whipping up fear.

I love our shared island, our shared Ireland and its core decency. I love it for its imagination and its celebration of the endless possibilities for our people.

We need to discuss the basis of a new form of trust built on a meaningful form of citizenship appropriate for a republic.

When I started out, people were afraid of parish priests. Now they're afraid of newspaper editors.

I think even the poorest people in the great country that is the United States should be entitled to basic health care.

I am delighted to be back home in Galway, the place I first came to as a 19-year-old in 1960. It's here where my heart is and will forever be.

I am delighted with the strong vote I have received. My message of positive leadership, patriotism and commitment clearly was resonating with tens of thousands of ordinary Irish people.

I want to say a very sincere thank you for this welcome home - it is a wonderful welcome home. It is the place to where I return and where I will always return because it is of Galway that I am.

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.

While the wider global environment is worrying, we are seeing some positive results in our economic affairs.

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

When people don't do what they want, they don't know what to do.

Some people smoked crack in alleyways. Franny ate chocolate. On the scale of things, it seemed entirely reasonable.

A gullible dreamer is better than an expert doubter.

Change yourself and your work will seem different.

Seek to share joy with others, or to make somebody else happy, and you will find your own soul radiant with the joy you wished for another.

You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.

In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons.

I've been in perfect health and perfectly happy all my life. I don't take any pills; I just get up, clean up after my wife, and start typing every day.

She glared at him. "Why are you forever asking hard questions?" He smiled. "Sooner or later you'll have to be able to answer one." Daja shoved him, grinning.