Liberalism is the right to question without being called a heretic. That's what America did for the world.

I respect the social graces enormously. How to pass the food. Don't yell from one room to another. Don't go through a closed door without a knock. Open the doors for the ladies. All these millions of simple household behaviors make for a better life. We can't live in constant rebellion against our parents - it's just silly. I'm very well mannered. It's not an abstract thing. It's a shared language of expectations.

Children give your life a resonance that it can't have without them.

In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo.

Through all permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great "literateur" of his time.

I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30's. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.