Irish Quotes

• My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed.

  

  Colm Toibin
  • She
  • English
  • Period

• I couldn't fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.

  

  Frank McCourt
  • Community
  • Baseball
  • Basketball

• I could have kept writing 'Irish' novels such as Birchwood and probably had a good deal more success than I did, especially on this side of the Atlantic. But you have to try to do many things. You have to try to do things that you actually think you're incapable of.

  

  John Banville
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Success

• “...to be Irish is to know the world will break your heart before you are thirty.”

  

  Virginia Henley
  • Heart
  • Irish
  • Thirty

• In New Haven, Conn., when I was growing up, there were two sorts of Irish. There were the "drugstore cowboy" micks, who hung around the Elm Street poolroom over Longley's Lunch. And there were the earnest young Irishmen who fought their way up from the Grand Avenue saloonkeeper backgrounds of their fathers, went through Yale Law School, and have now found high place by the preferment of local politics or in the teaching profession.

  

  James T. Farrell
  • Growing Up
  • Irish
  • New Haven

• An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.

  

  George Bernard Shaw
  • Irish
  • General
  • English army

• I'm just a true Irish boy at heart. I'm just myself, I stick by my guns and I treat people the way I think they should be treated, regardless of their status. And I just have a laugh.

  

  Colin Farrell
  • People
  • Heart
  • True

• I grew up in a big, blended Irish Catholic family just outside of Los Angeles.

  

  Peggy Johnson
  • Up
  • Family
  • Catholic

• My uncle was a photographer for 'The Irish Times.'

  

  Róisín Murphy
  • Irish
  • Uncle
  • Photographer

• I look Italian, but I act Irish.

  

  Ken Cuccinelli
  • Irish
  • Italian

• I am very proud to be Irish.

  

  Philip Treacy
  • Proud
  • Irish

• I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds there were not mine. I never felt them. I liked how open in most ways Catalan nationalism was, compared to Irish nationalism. I disliked the violence and cruelty in Ireland.

  

  Colm Toibin
  • Book
  • Violence
  • Irish

• I like Guinness, and that will make anyone Irish. That and soda bread, and I'm good to go.

  

  Peter Riegert
  • Good
  • Irish

• Second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians. Second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups'.

  

  Jeb Bush
  • English
  • Irish

• It occurs to you that Ulysses is about cliché. It is about inherited, ready-made formulations - most notably Irish Catholicism and anti-Semitism. After all, prejudices are clichés: they are secondhand hatreds . . . Joyce never uses a cliché in innocence.

  

  Martin Amis
  • Irish

• I've heard some duff Irish accents. The worst must be Mickey Rourke.

  

  James Nesbitt
  • Irish

• I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me like Irish faces. I hadn't yet learnt how careful outsiders have to be when talking about race in America, and I'd put my foot in it. Someone stood up and said aggressively, 'What do you mean by Irish faces?'

  

  Colm Toibin
  • Up
  • America
  • Twin

• I've always been fond of my heritage, particularly my Irish heritage. But I'm also from all over the world.

  Eugene Simon
  • Irish
  • Heritage

• I think most Irish people are creative. Whether it's music, or dance, or... certainly storytelling is in the blood.

  

  Genevieve O'Reilly
  • People
  • Music
  • Dance

• I'm 100 percent Irish by birth, grew up Italian, and yet I constantly get cast as playing Jewish.

  

  Heather Matarazzo
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Jewish

• I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.

  

  John Joseph Lydon
  • Education
  • Catholic
  • Irish

• He was an Irish patriot true and fearless.

  

  Michael Collins
  • Irish
  • Fearless
  • Patriot

• The Irish and British, they love satire, its a large part of the culture.

  

  Ben Nicholson
  • Culture
  • Irish
  • British

• I'm from a small Irish family of 10, so there always was music in the house. Growing up, my older sisters had things like 'South Pacific' and opera on.

  

  Colm Wilkinson
  • Up
  • Music
  • Family

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