MALACHY MCCOURT

I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11. It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America.

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

A lie to me is a dream that might come true.

In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't.

Live every day as if it's going to be your last, and one day, you'll be right.

Imagination in the child is powerful. Reading and laughter and love are essential in our lives.

In Ireland we got into the habit of electing our intellectual inferiors to high public office.

To lose one parent is a tragedy, to lose both is utter carelessness.

Limericks don't come from Limerick. But it comes from that between the verses when they used to have those competitions that they would put in the refrain, "follow me up, follow me up, follow me up to Limerick Town."

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.

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.

This is the place for me where every single dream I ever had came to fruition and I love it dearly. I love ya, New York.

The word is a sound of some sort and that's where the energy comes from.

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

I think people are so disillusioned with the parties. It's one party with two different names, and they are so spineless.

I am full of theories that are based on a very liquid foundation, because I used to be a drinker.

Somebody once said that the Irish derived the greatest benefit from the English language. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter, they fling it at the sky like paint pots full of rainbow colors.

The purpose of the media is to make us all spectators, to watch. So that's why we have millions of fat children watching the games, eating and consuming and not playing themselves.

Being a kid myself, I loved playing and I loved playing with words, and making up things and riddles and songs and not afraid of being silly in public.

Alcoholism is a dread, an awful, and fatal disease.

We are spectators to violence, and therefore are, how well we don't know and make sure we don't know the difference of real violence to that of simulation.

Here am I, a human being and that has a body that is getting old. And I only have one, I can't trade it in.

That's one part of oppression is to make sure you are a shameful, shamed human being. That takes care of the past.

Never make any reference to the other person's family. "You're just like your - " because that is out, completely.

I've avoided work all my life, you see. So, I'm like a bee. I go from flower to flower.