Irish Quotes
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The first music I was ever exposed to was Irish folk music, like the Clancy Brothers. My father plays that and Christmas songs.
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My dad was a very funny man - he's the one who taught me life would be awfully hard without humor! I'm sure his Irish wit in some way influenced my decision to become an actress.
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I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.
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I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
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My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time.
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My old manager of the Irish National Theatre said 'Don't worry about being a star, just worry about being a working actor. Just keep working.' I think that's really good advice.
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My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.
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Most boys' first hero is their father. That was definitely true of my dad. He was a proud Irish American and he taught me a lot about ethics and responsibility. He also introduced me to a lot of wonderful folk music.
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I was a lonely child. My brother Tony and I were never very close, neither as children nor as adults, but I was tightly bound to him. We were forced to be together because we were really quite alone. We were in the middle of the Irish countryside, in County Galway, in the West of Ireland, and we didn't see many other kids.
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Most of my jokes are racist - usually about the Irish.
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If you ask me where do I belong, it would be somewhere in the Irish Sea almost - born in Hong Kong, Chinese mother, Portuguese father from Macao, lived in Europe most of my life.
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My father was sick when I was little, and we had a woman, a nanny-type, who was from Ireland. Her daughter was in Irish dancing, so she put me in it, and in the summertime, every weekend was filled with traveling somewhere to dance in competitions.
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The fight in Ireland has been one for the soul of a race – that Irish race which with seven centuries of defeat behind it still battled for the sanctity of its dwelling place.
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No, young man. No jokes here. There's a time and place. When you say something in class they take you seriously. You're the teacher. You say you went out with a sheep and they’re going to swallow every word. They don’t know the mating habits of the Irish.
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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.
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I had to have some balls to be Irish Catholic in South London. Most of that time I spent fighting.
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Growing up, I was your classic Catholic Irish kid. I went to mass every Sunday. Then in secondary school I went to boarding school, and there was mass seven days a week before breakfast - it may have put me off!
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It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
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I suppose many people in Ireland would regard me as being more a European writer than an Irish writer. I don't think this is so.
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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.
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The British don't runaway from terrorism. We have had 30-odd years of terrorism in our own country from the Irish Republican Army. We're used to it.
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My parents are Irish, my grandparents are Irish, my great-grandparents are Irish. I was born in England; my blood is Irish.
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First a piece of Irish wisdom: you should always listen to a bookie. For they have a saying, 'Money tells a good story,' and somewhere in their odds is a kind of science-fiction existentialism that decrees that we, the people, know everything. In other words, betting patterns often make for good, unconscious soothsaying.
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I always gravitate towards anything from Ireland. With Irish lit, I love the use of language, but also in many instances, the Irish writers are writing about people and circumstances that I can relate to.
