I've never been in a bad play. There might have been bad productions and I might have been bad in them, but I've never been in a play that wasn't interesting or worthwhile doing on some level.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

Acting is way of making yourself exist.

Angel was the first Irish feature film. Neil's first movie and my first movie.

I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.

The worst thing for an actor is a director that gets on your nerves and says things that actually confuse you.

People ask me to smile for the camera, but somehow it always comes out gloomy.

I don't feel ashamed of my wife's political background, and I don't think she should either. I feel that the people who administered the North of Ireland for the last 20 years should be ashamed. There you are.

I have never been to a brothel. I don't think I could go into one.

People often refer to my career before The Crying Game as something which led up to that point. But I was very fulfilled in what I was doing.

I've never been in a bad play. There might have been bad productions and I might have been bad in them, but I've never been in a play that wasn't interesting or worthwhile doing on some level.

I believe some people in this business suffer from fame because they behave in a famous fashion.

I think great art is always ambiguous and can't be pinned down.

I am afraid of death, scared by it. I already don't know whether I exist or not. So dying really terrifies me.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.

That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don't have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere.

At this moment, when Ireland seems about to break into something new, we thought it was worth looking back at a time when people seemed to have found a way out of the sectarian division of the country.

You have to know who you are, if you don't you have nightmares.

I didn't want to be seen as just a guy on a list. I'm interested in good scripts, scripts that are about something, scripts that move your acting along.

The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way.

I never watch TV. I know I'm missing so much, aren't I? I'm probably not. I can't stand popular TV. I've got too much to do to watch it. I know that sounds pretentious and pompous, but there you are.

I see people with laptops as being enslaved to something they can't live without.

I'd like to own a movie camera - a proper one, with film, not a digital thing. Celluloid has more character.

I'm not in denial about technology, but my mother used to say when I was a kid, 'Son, you're handless,' because I couldn't fix anything. My ambition is to be a Luddite.

If you're playing a lead, you're shaping the movie. When you're playing a supporting role, you've got only a moment to make it count.

You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

Never play anything that don't sound right. You might not make any money, but at least you won't get hostile with yourself.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

I couldn't be happier about being a part of 'Hunger Games' and to play Katniss. I have a huge responsibility to the fans of this incredible book and I don't take it lightly. I will give everything I have to these movies and to this role to make it worthy of Suzanne Collins' masterpiece.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

If Davis Cup was a little bit less or once every two years, I would be more inclined to play. But the way it is now, it is too much tennis for me.

I remember him watching me through the crack of a door singing with a hairbrush. I was in front of his mirror. I think he wanted me to sing. He would get me on the table and make me sing sometimes or play the piano. He was very encouraging on that front.

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.

You have to like the characters you play.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

Well, I play Jews and parrots. Parrots are how I've branched out.

We just have to get it going and play hard every time out.

Art is an expression of who you are. Parts that I play are my sculptures.

There is an audience for every play; it's just that sometimes it can't wait long enough to find it.

I'll play it and tell you what it is later.