Brian Friel

“Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement - as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary...”

“I was a member of the Nationalist Party for several years. I don't remember how long. Those were very dreary days, because the Nationalist Party... it's hard to describe what it was. I suppose it held on to some kind of little faith, you know? It wasn't even sure what the faith was, and it was a very despised enterprise by everybody.”

“I know now why I stopped writing short stories. It was at the point when I recognised how difficult they were.”

“...that it is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.”

“I had grandparents who were native Irish speakers, and also, two of the four grandparents were illiterate.”