Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.

I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching

Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it's the one part of you the world can't interfere with.

I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.

Love her as in childhood Through feeble, old and grey. For you’ll never miss a mother’s love Till she’s buried beneath the clay.

Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.

If you were mean to your parents, they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.