Love in all its forms is very difficult ... to express. It changes, obviously. If you’re young, and you’re romantically in love with somebody, and often if you’ve just met somebody, its crazy! It’s completely overwhelming. You can’t think of anything else. You just want to climb inside the other person and live under their pancreas. And then it mellows, somewhat... to the point where you can barely look at them... without feeling a mild distaste

All the shy people are doomed! Natural selection favors the loud and the aggressive

Idioms are a big thing in Ireland. They want to fill the time, to show how good they are at talk - it's a talk-off

There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There's the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that's ok, can we get 8 of those please, give us 8 of those." There's the other one, you know, where you go "Ga... bt... Jesus, WHAT is that?" Very, very occasionally I concede you will hit a subtle one. You know, where you go "Ga... ba... ah, actually that's not that bad, that is. It's quite nice."

One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing.

I'm fascinated by how you'll change your position so many times over a lifetime, but really what you're doing is occupying a series of positions on a landscape.

As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.