Your compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share.

I was reared a Catholic but I think every day we ask ourselves, not consciously, what are we doing on this planet? What's it all about?

We live in an age where revenge seems to be the most important thing for individuals and countries.

I learned my "facts of life" on toilet walls. I'd walk up in school bathrooms and there would be crude drawings and figures engaged in sex. That's how I learned.

Yes, I'm Catholic; I'm proud of it. But I had lots of Protestant friends.

And as the hour approached for the execution, in his own mind, Collins became both the executioner and the victim. He would pace up and down, transformed in almost a kind of exorcism when he knew he was responsible for taking someone's life.

I was always attracted to the type of cinema hero as an adolescent growing up in Ireland. Robert Mitchum springs to mind. Later on, it was Steve McQueen to a certain extent and Charles Bronson. They're these types of grizzled characters who had one foot on the side of law and order and the other foot in the bad guy's camp.