It wasn't long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament.

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.

I think my life will always be worth living, though I don't imagine it being very easy.

But I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.

The Irish aren't great singers, but they have great songs.

I'm not good enough to be a saint and not bad enough to be interesting.

To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else