It's been a long time coming but the reality is that this process is at a crossroads.

Hugging trees has a calming effect on me. I'm talking about enormous trees that will be there when we are all dead and gone. I've hugged trees in every part of this little island.

Making peace, I have found, is much harder than making war.

One man's transparency is another's humiliation.

The way forward is by building political support for republican and democratic objectives across Ireland and by winning support for these goals internationally.

I was leaving the Belfast court, where I had been called to answer a very flimsy charge, later dismissed. You're relatively safe in such areas in the Irish community, but to go to downtown Belfast for me is dangerous. My appearance in court had been well advertised by the police. I think it was too much of a coincidence that the people who shot me were just passing by.

You can only judge anything that happened in the times, in the times that that happened.