Hugh Leonard

“The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.”

“My mother was passionate. She was stubborn, the dominant one in the family. She dominated my father.”

“Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.”

“I think with every writer there are two people there.”

“We are all the foolishness and all the crimes we did. We're also all the kindnesses we did. I hate to think of life as if we understood time. We don't understand time.”

“My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.”

“A thing well done is worth doing.”

“Gossip is more popular than literature.”

“It's a natural thing for people to say, you know, Who's in this book? I find myself get ting a little defensive. People come along and I'm waiting for that first question.”

“I don't think anyone is the perfect one to play me.”

“My life is every moment of my life. It is not a culmination of the past.”

“I'm a much nicer person since my wife died. I found out what pain is, so on that level I'm much nicer.”

“As somebody once said, we're not punished for our sins, we're punished by them.”

“I came down to the living room one day and my wife was standing in the living room. It wasn't an illusion. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. The moment I saw her, she vanished.”

“I've always believed in survival.”

“I've always enjoyed a woman's company more than men's. They're usually better looking.”

“I feel like the writer observing the grief, but it is difficult to be detached from it.”

“I went through life like an idiot for a great deal of the time, saying there's nothing I would change. That was a very arrogant thing to say. There's a lot I would change. There are people I would have steered clear of.”

“We were married for almost 45 years. We fought all the time, it wasn't a great love or anything, it wasn't a great, all-consuming passion. She was just there. A lot of people were startled because we didn't seem devoted but we were.”

“I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else.”