Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.

She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.

We shape ourselves by our imaginative reach.

There are fewer and fewer Jews in Ireland, but we still have one of the most famous Jewish characters in literary history, of course, in Leopold Bloom.

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday... He consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it.

Everything was fabulous, even our breakdowns.

One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.