I think that's why you see so many Americans in Dublin look so sad: they are LOOKING for the DOOR through which they can BEGIN to understand this PLACE. I tell them, 'Go to the races.' I think it's the best place to START understanding the Irish.

I'm a PRODUCT of my IRISH culture, and I COULD no more lose that than I could my sense of IDENTITY.

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.

There are not MANY IRISH PEOPLE PLAYING TENNIS!

I MAKE a MEAN Irish soda bread every Christmas and GIVE it out to FRIENDS and family.

One of the problems that comes up time and time again seems to be this notion of being 'pure' Irish. If you are Protestant, BORN in the Northern part of the island and deeply into the Protestant TRADITION, that somehow does not make you a legitimate Irish PERSON. Yet there is a HUGE British influence in parts of the South.

I'm IRISH. I THINK about DEATH all the TIME.

There is not a single injustice in Northern Ireland that is worth the LOSS of a single BRITISH SOLDIER or a single Irish CITIZEN either.

I will be a President for all the PEOPLE, whether they voted for me or not, whether they are young or old and PARTICULARLY for the Irish ABROAD. I'm LOOKING forward to it and I think it will be exciting and wonderful.

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 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.

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck MADE me an Anglophile. I listened to English and IRISH artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the TRADITIONAL BLUES that I was listening to.

I think the IRISH WOMAN was freed from SLAVERY by BINGO. They can go out now, DRESSED up, with their handbags and have a drink and play bingo. And they deserve it.

My FATHER's parents were IRISH. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a WEEK to LOOK at the old homestead.

I DROPPED out of school at 17 and JOINED the Irish band The Frames, GETTING my first GLIMPSE into the world of professional film MAKING while shooting of a number of rock videos.