Irish Catholics are more interested in the rosary beads than in the rosary.

There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents-if the term is to be used at all.

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

We were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it.

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.

... in Northern Ireland, if you don't have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.