Quotes

There was a big thing in the Behan family of achieving and wanting to be something special. There was a big drive in the family, even though it was poor and working class, to do something important, to contribute something to Irish culture. He certainly achieved that in a spectacular way.

A lot of the time in Ireland we put people into boxes and that's it.

There's no doubt that New York held its temptations for any writer - it still does.

There are so many police series that we all end up playing a cop of one hue or another eventually.

I do like the dark, gritty psychological thrillers, but sometimes we need a little respite from that.

Integrated education should be the norm - I'm passionate about that.

We pay millions of pounds to separate Catholic and Protestant children, and even more millions on attempting to bring them together as adults. You can't make someone fear another person if they shared a desk for seven years.

Kurt Vonnegut talks about how we know there is another family out there and when we find it we get this almost instinctive sense of belonging. And that is how I felt in Enniskillen in 1977 when I realized there were these people of all ages, whatever their religion, from different backgrounds, who were bound together by a love of plays and acting.

But the older I get, the more I like my father and understand him. I was the first-born and he was very proud of me but he never was able to tell me that.

My mother never once asked me to stay at home, because she knew acting was something I really wanted to do. She was great.

Any mother watching her son achieve his dreams shares that success at some level.

We need ongoing indigenous products, like 'Blood,' to sell on the international market.

The problem is that in Ireland everybody thinks you have to have a 'take' on something. But if you have a 'take' on something then that's a spoof.

My father was a foreman on building sites and he was really good at getting a day's work out of fellas. And he did it without being a tyrant. He was a good guy.

It would help a lot of directors if they tried a little bit of acting, so they can understand what the process is about. It certainly wouldn't do them any harm.

There were two drama societies in Enniskillen when I was growing up, St. Michaels and the Enniskillen Amateur Dramatic Society, and I had the pleasure of working with them both.

One of the things that's wonderful about having a festival in a small town like Enniskillen is that we don't have lots of purpose-built venues so we have to be creative about where we place events.

I trained to be a theatre actor, I love the live gig, the transference between an audience and a performer.

Beckett was the most thorough of playwrights. He tells you what to do and if you've any humility at all, you'll take his advice.

I don't claim that our TV comedies are highbrow in anyway, but I think there's a basis to them, and that's why they're more popular than other TV comedies. There's a basis of truth in them, a gut feeling.

There is a lot of rubbish written about toilet humour - people saying it is childish and pretending it is beneath them - but there is no doubting the effectiveness of a really good willy gag.

A lot of people are obsessed with looking cool. They feel they have to look after their image.

You're entering dangerous land when you start theorising about comedy.

Even though we work in the same field, we have an intense private life away from our professional lives.

From the stage I've seen people of all ages absolutely roaring at really good toilet humour.