When an English man speaks well, for example now, and this is another way of putting us down, they say he's "eloquent" you see. "Oh, eloquent chap they are!" An Irish person speak well, they say, "Ah, you have the gift of the gab." "Ah, you kissed the blarney stone." You see, all of this putting us down.

My purpose in life always has been to avoid work. And I hear these people saying, "I work hard and I pay my taxes." Well, you're an asshole.

To be Irish today is the abandonment of shame and the younger people are moving it out and they're moving the fear away. They're not afraid, they're adventurous.

I wonder what I can do about war. Is it the destiny of human kind to eventually wipe ourselves out with these weapons of mass destruction? Are we stupid to think that we can control them?

I tell my children, shut up and let me speak. What I've learned, I have been married for 45 years and in my own family It is that I've learned to stop being judgmental, to listen.

I would never become an alcoholic like my father because my father deserted us. But diseases, there's no let up.

I was not a good father in my first marriage. Although there are ways of deserting the family without leaving physically, I was deserted in my head. I was always out, always in the saloons, always drinking, always messing about.