I think if you grow up in a culture where the army is out on the street sighting you with rifles, it has to have some kind of psychological impact.

Wherever you grow up, you think of it as normal.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can't get bitter, we can't get jaded.

I think the poetry that came out of Belfast, and especially the Queen's University set, in the 1970s and '80s - you know, Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Ciaran Carson - that was probably the finest body of work since the Gaelic renaissance, up there with the work of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory.

I think children of divorced parents do grow up quicker. You just do.

Certain characters are sticky, especially if they help you grow up as a person, I think.