Ed O'Brien Quotes

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

What I've said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.

Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.

I'm a big fan of the Irish accent. After a couple of drinks, I start to get a bit of an Irish lilt, too.

I think Sweden is known for people being a bit more quiet than other cultures, and I guess it's a mixture: shyness and leaving room for other people to talk. Of course, when people get drunk, all of that disappears.

What makes Ireland inclined toward the drama is that it's a great country for conversation.

I was born in Mumbai, but I grew up in England, and then my adulthood has been in the States. I'm an American stuffed with an English person with an Indian person inside. I feel like those things kind of inform me in some way, which I think helps me as an actor.

In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.

Theatres, along with the likes of the Ulster Orchestra, for example, are the cultural heartbeats of our towns and cities, and without them, we are much poorer for it.

I suppose I have become a sort of living monument in Portugal. But I come from a family with roots all over the world, so the idea of patriotism is not very strong in me. My country is the country of Chekhov, Beethoven, Velasquez - writers I like, painters and artists I admire.

Everybody gets too drunk sometimes; and even if everybody didn't, I have gotten too drunk sometimes. I haven't hurt anybody. In Ireland we drink a lot. It's part of our culture. I like drinking. I don't think it's a bad thing.

From Borges, those wonderful gaucho stories from which I learned that you can be specific as to a time and place and culture and still have the work resonate with the universal themes of love, honor, duty, betrayal, etc. From Amiri Baraka, I learned that all art is political, although I don't write political plays.

The fact is that most 'Irish-Americans', in spite of dropping the word 'Irish' into half of all sentences, couldn't find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland.

He who drinks Australian thinks Australian.

Drunkenness is the Touch Stone by which they try every man; and he that cannot or will not drink, has a mark set upon Him. He is abused behind his Back. He is hurt in his Property, and he is persecuted as far as the Power of Malice and Intemperance.

It takes three-quarters of the world in these days to hold the Irish family, and is pleasant to know that some of the elder sons of the family are considered by their discriminating fellow citizens worthy to be entrusted with the liberties and fortunes of their adopted countries.

The Irish nation is de facto a Catholic nation

When I was growing up, for example, everybody on our street was Irish. And all the girls did Irish step dancing. It was pre-Lord of the Dance - it was before anybody knew what gillys were - but we did, and there was such pride among the members of my family and people I grew up with.

What's interesting when you see 'Black Panther' is you realize it couldn't have been directed by anybody else but Ryan Coogler. It's a great adventure movie, and it works on all those different levels as entertainment, but it has this kind of cultural through-line that is so specific that it makes it universal.

Ireland, once you live there, you're seduced by it.

Everyone has a black guy inside them. Mine is a Cuban sonero who is 80-something years old and sings better than I do. His name is Medoro Madera. Medoro has been recording since 1997.

St. Patrick, bringing the religion to Ireland, this is what we should celebrate.

Muslims do drink, as anyone who has spent a wild weekend with Saudi booze tourists in Bahrain will know. Those Saudi tourists are like teenage girls in Manchester on a Saturday night. But each country and region is different.

It's not a hard sell to be asked to do something in Ireland.