If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.

I would like to break out of this dark, brooding image, cause I’m actually not like that at all.

Life is hard for everyone. That’s why there’s such a nice reward at the end of it.

There is not a single extant study that supports all the arguments against men being with their children. It’s absolute bollocks.

At this moment, when Ireland seems about to break into something new, we thought it was worth looking back at a time when people seemed to have found a way out of the sectarian division...

Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it’s...

The person I was with was organizing my birthday party, and also happens to be a good friend of mine, who is a married woman. If you don’t mind, drop the Post. What they indicated...

My kids act all the time and it’s exactly what I used to do.

It’s like you asked me about the depression thing: you grope towards an understanding of whatever it is your going through, and it’s not personal, there are forces in play around you, and you seek...

It’s actually pretty complex, because there’s two levels of reality in the narrative. One is what really took place, and the other is Spider’s poisoned version of what took place.

But I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I’ve several friends just haven’t made it by taking Prozac.

This is the most important tour in Ireland since the Rats because I’ve built up a body of songs, since we split, as a solo artist.

I always wanted to be in movies but could never figure out a way of getting into them. There were none being made in Ireland at that time.

And part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don’t have the privilege of bringing them up?

I’m not a very gregarious person. I can’t bear attention being called to me in a public place, which is ridiculous in a business that pays you to be noticed.

People ask me to smile for the camera, but somehow it always comes out gloomy.

Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

The only way you can continue to make artistic films is to make an occasional one of those. They kind of keep your marketability going to the extent that people will employ you.

I don’t think anyone sets out to malign poor people but certainly that’s what we do through organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Well, a sort of epiphany: I was in a great band. And it’s very cool to be at 53 and realise that when you were a kid you were in a great band.

I am afraid of death, scared by it. I already don’t know whether I exist or not. So dying really terrifies me.

But if somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience etc.

O’Neill presents a very complex multi-layered kind of challenge. His characters are always deeply complex and, to a great extent, inaccessible.

People often refer to my career before The Crying Game as something which led up to that point. But I was very fulfilled in what I was doing.

Men who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they’re left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humour to try and draw attention...

What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? ‘Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.’ I think of that. No big deal. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I am content.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

When I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.

I believe some people in this business suffer from fame because they behave in a famous fashion.

Certainly, I think being depressed is absolutely part of the human condition, it has to be, if there’s joy there’s its opposite, and it’s something you ride if you possibly can.

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.

That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don’t have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

From doing A Moon for the Misbegotten, I’ve learned that nobody’s love can save anybody else. There are people who want to die, and nothing or nobody will stop them. The only one who can...

Irish Americans are about as Irish as Black Americans are African.

There’s a lot of Doyle in me. I don’t know where I begin and Doyle ends or where Doyle begins and I end.

I didn’t want to be seen as just a guy on a list. I’m interested in good scripts, scripts that are about something, scripts that move your acting along.

Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone.

A completely disrespectful photographer was asked to stop taking photographs, and then said, ‘I’ve got what I want. What are you going to do about it?’ How would you feel if somebody walked up and...

The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he’s writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious...

Music is what I must do, business is what I need to do and politics is what I have to do.

I’m absolutely crazy about fly fishing.

It’s really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you’re going to get it to these people.

As soon as I did, everything, the whole room, just clicked.

I don’t feel ashamed of my wife’s political background, and I don’t think she should either. I feel that the people who administered the North of Ireland for the last 20 years should be ashamed....

Essentially the change came, and correctly and properly so, when women finally achieved their biological and financial independence concomitantly.

And then, I suppose, there’s also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

The worst thing for an actor is a director that gets on your nerves and says things that actually confuse you.

My depressions aren’t so much… depression’s too heavy a word. I get very down and y’know, boredom is the key to it as I’ve said.

Acting is way of making yourself exist.