I'm not a very gregarious person. I can't bear attention being called to me in a public place, which is ridiculous in a business that pays you to be noticed.

From doing A Moon for the Misbegotten, I've learned that nobody's love can save anybody else. There are people who want to die, and nothing or nobody will stop them. The only one who can save you is yourself.

I would like to break out of this "dark, brooding" image, cause I'm actually not like that at all. In Ireland, brooding is a term we use for hens. A brooding hen is supposed to lay eggs. Everytime somebody says "He's dark and brooding" I think: "He's about to lay an egg".

This notion that Americans have. . . that they don't have to do anything other than be American in order to lead - that's very pervasive in the culture, it goes very deep into how they see themselves here.

I think there's a bit of the devil in everybody. There's a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun.

I attended the bedside of a friend who was dying in a Dublin hospital. She lived her last hours in a public ward with a television blaring out a football match, all but drowning our final conversation.

When you come back to a country that you've left, you're in a very peculiar situation because, in a way, you don't belong to that country any more, even though when I'm in America I feel I don't belong there either.