New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.

The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.

It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.

They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues.

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

The only thing I envy in young people is their livers.

The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think.

People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.

Passion trumps fear

The fact that social media has leveled the playing field doesn't offer you the right to disrespect the elderly

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

...I'm so over the tattoos and the T-shirts and rings through the noses. It's not pretty, it's not pleasant, it's not exciting. Please stop it now.

Christianity is a strangely cheery religion.

The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith

When I'm making a movie, I don't like to know what's going to happen next. I like to watch something and be surprised all the time, and just not know, and let it take me wherever.

The highest ranking woman in the Congress, Cathy McMorris Rodgers who has given birth three times while she's been in Congress. That's pretty impressive.