And I remember being knocked out by The Butcher Boy. My first experience of it was in New York when Patrick McCabe read extracts from it.

Music can’t change the world.

When you get to speak Irish, you become more at one with yourself, you kind of have a spark when you use it, and I think it’s a great dialect.

I’m enjoying it, but I still don’t know why I’m hooked on acting.

I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.

I think there’s a bit of the devil in everybody. There’s a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun.

I think my being such a nomad let me into acting. I was always having to create a new image whenever we moved.

So when I got to 50 I just thought, Hold on: I’m thin. I’ve got my hair. I’m well off. I survived, you know.

Angel was the first Irish feature film. Neil’s first movie and my first movie.

Music is something I must do, business is something I need to do, and Africa is something I have to do. That’s the way it breaks down in my life.

I had one of the best days of my life. I spent the afternoon with my two kids and my ex-wife at Serendipity. Then I came to the theater, and you know, I think I...

I’ve been worked over by the English press because there’s an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife’s, and for that matter that my wife’s politics are identical with her politics of 20...

I’d always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was...

I thought to myself, there’s a man who gave up his life to serve others – to touch people in that way is probably the greatest thing you can do as a human being.

I can’t control how people are going to react. I try not to worry about what I can’t control.

The girls are a complete joy and I love their passion. They argue with me like mad and I love that too.

At least when you’re acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What’s going on? What’s the great discontent at the heart of it?

It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, ‘We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we’re not, we cling to.’

I’ve never been in a bad play. There might have been bad productions and I might have been bad in them, but I’ve never been in a play that wasn’t interesting or worthwhile doing on...

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.