I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.

The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It's very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you've told everybody about what you need.

It's nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do.

Well, if you're talking about the current climate, there's a lack of content in American film because I think people are deeply confused about their emotions, and they don't regret certain aspects of their own foreign policy.

I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.

When you've written a movie, you then get together with a whole lot of people and make it. In many ways, I think it is far nicer to be with people rather than being completely solitary.

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

There's no point in making a film out of a great book. The book's already great. What's the point?

The Company of Wolves doesn't belong in any category, so it's difficult to prepare an audience for it. It's not a horror film, it's not a fantasy film, it's not a children's film - so what is it?

It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.

The End of the Affair is almost like a play.

I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well.

Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

I've had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.

Well, Company of Wolves was about that literally, about fairy tales.

I took two years away from making films to write a novel.

Why should a horror film be just a horror film? To me, The Company of Wolves is a fairy tale; it's got all those elements plus a lot more. And we know that fairy tales aren't innocent any more.

Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

In Dreams... well, I was slightly overcompensating with that. I was a bit like a director for hire, so maybe I was putting too much imagery that was familiar to me into it.

I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.

Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

It's the opposite journey from what I've usually done with films. I find it very easy to go from, say, a lit, pleasurable environment, like what you see outside there, to a very dark place. But the opposite journey, which is what this movie takes, is much more complicated.

I do enjoy working with writers.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

And I think I often choose to do something because it's quite different from what I've done before.

Never make a promise - you may have to keep it.

But everyone gets burnt, don't they? Certain things are outside of your control. I suppose the only thing you can learn as a director is to not put yourself into situations where it can get outside of your control. And that's what happened.

For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

No, I just thought of a story and wrote down what I saw. It was about two kids in Ireland who went around killing people. It was called Travelers, and it was made as an independent film.

The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It's about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it's worth getting your teeth into.

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.

Ireland. Great for the spirit - very bad for the body.

My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area.

My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.

We shall not fight for the preservation of the enemy, which has laid waste with death and desolation the fields and hills of Ireland for 700 years.

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.

In some parts of Ireland the sleep which knows no waking is always followed by a wake which knows no sleeping.

Sinn Fein is the fastest growing party on the island of Ireland.

Indeed, American companies make three times as much profits from their investment in one E.U. country, Ireland, than they do from all their investments in China.

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

I find that I sent wolves not shepherds to govern Ireland, for they have left me nothing but ashes and carcasses to reign over!

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.