Top 1200 Irish Writers Quotes & Sayings - Page 18

I have differences of opinion within my own family, an Irish Catholic family. So, I do respect those that disagree.

I've got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

I am who I am: an Irish Catholic kid, working class from Long Island. And I made it big.

Well, I couldn't speak English before I went to Belfast. So I learned English with a Northern Irish accent.

And I'm a Catholic, from an Irish Catholic family, and we know plenty of stuff about guilt.

The whole world has American dreams. This country has people from all parts of the world. We have Irish who live here, we have Brazilians.

Irish Catholics are more interested in the rosary beads than in the rosary.

My mom is Filipino and my dad is half Russian and half Irish.

The Irish always jest even though they jest with tears.

I grew up in a world that was clannish - old Tasmanian-Irish families with big extended families.

My mum's parents were from Ireland, my dad's mum was American-Irish.

As long as Ireland is unfree the only honourable attitude for Irish men, women to have is an attitude of rebellion.

I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.

When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women.

My father named me Kelli because 'Kelli O'Hara' just sounded so Irish.

I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats.

The trouble with the Irish question always has been that it was an English question.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

Us Irish are kind of like that: we're hard grafters. We like to prove everybody wrong.

A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.

But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.

I grew up Irish Catholic with a bunch of kids at Catholic school.

[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.

My dad lives in Sicily, so I'm half Italian and half Irish - it's a fiery combination.

My only counsel to Ireland is that in order to become deeply Irish, she must become European.

I think it's an Irish thing. We don't really care. We say it as we mean it, and you have to deal with it. The truth is the truth.

I'm hugely proud of being Irish. And I don't even know what that means. I just know that it's true.

English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish football gains so much from being in Europe. Clubs and fans all benefit from European action, laws and funding.

I'm a product of my Irish culture, and I could no more lose that than I could my sense of identity.

I'm tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro - that's the Scotch-Irish part.

I'm Irish in the mythic, romantic sense, but in the living sense, I'm a Londoner.

Writers of color are given certain messages - explicit or implicit - about what they're allowed to write about or what will be successful if they write about it. And white writers are given another set of implicit and, sometimes, explicit messages.

I was actually a single man until I was 41. Rather late. Irish marry late.

I spent my entire Irish Catholic youth in a constant state of guilt over imaginary sins. I learned that nothing is a sin as long as you don't take pleasure from it.

I like Irish pubs, except for all the loud music and drinking, and people acting like idiots.

The school I went to was so Gaelic that you learned how to play the tin whistle and how to Irish-dance in class.

And when you get an eminent journal like Time magazine complaining, as it often has, that to the young writers of today life seems short on rewards and that what they write is a product of their own neuroses, in its silly way the magazine is merely stating the status quo and obvious truth. The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

There might well have been an Irish great-great-grandfather of mine back then in the 1800s.

I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.

There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.

I made my final collection in college in London using Irish handwoven wool. That is how I discovered Ireland first; I just fell in love with it, really.

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something.

My name is a form of an Irish/Gaelic name that means 'Red King.'

I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious.

I used to have an Australian accent for school and an Irish accent for home.

Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure Scottish-English settlers around Rochester.

I've always been fond of my heritage, particularly my Irish heritage. But I'm also from all over the world.

I am delighted with the strong vote I have received. My message of positive leadership, patriotism and commitment clearly was resonating with tens of thousands of ordinary Irish people.

For me, being Catholic was who I was and who I am, just like I'm Irish and Slovak. It's just so ingrained in us.

I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American. They both have good skin.

Salinger is such a terrific writer; he did so many great things. He is one of those writers that I still reread, simply because he makes me see the possibilities and makes me feel like writing. There are certain writers who put you in the mood to write. In the way a whiff of a cigar will bring back memories of a ballgame on a Saturday afternoon, reading Salinger makes me want to get to the typewriter.

Why do we like being Irish? Partly because It gives us a hold on the sentimental English As members of a world that never was, Baptized with fairy water

It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish.

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But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible

Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.

A lot of writers choose to live in New York, partly because of the literary culture here, and partly because Brooklyn's a pretty nice place to live. And a lot of writers who might not geographically reside in New York still point their ambitions towards New York in some sense.