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

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

I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.

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.

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

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

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