“The best roles you have to fight for. You have to really want to do it and you have to go after it.”

I like being at home with my music and my books. I’ve done all the partying, I’ve done enough partying for four or five people as a young fella. But now I like the quiet life.

From a very young age I had an ambition to be a musician, and to do that professionally. That’s what I pursued until I was about 20, playing in bands that were taken pretty seriously at that stage.

I think you fall out of love with theater while you’re doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, “Please make this end.”

I’m pretty adamant to do an American accent because you get it immediately.

For me, drama is conflict.

I come from a long line of teachers. Not only did I not go into the family business; I had an aborted law career and I played in bands. ‘Disco Pigs’ was my first professional acting experience.

I’m not interested in a good man’s life. I’m interested in contradiction.

I’ve never done a film for the money.

All I’ve tried to do as an actor is follow the good writing. That’s been my main drive. It’s not always possible, so when you do come upon it, like when I came upon this, you realize pretty quickly this is something you need to be involved with.

It’s always nice to be challenged.

You’re an actor who’s Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn’t be limited by your extraction.

You take the job very seriously and between action and cut, that’s where your focus should be. And then there’s a lot of levity in between and a lot of good fun.

I’ve had the pleasure and the great luck to work with some incredible actors over the years and you have to observe and learn and take something from it and try and become better yourself.

Every Irish person of my generation and earlier, we were raised Catholic and we’d have to learn it in school, we’d to learn the catechism by rote.

I think it’s necessary to keep moving forward. I’ve always said that nostalgia is death, really for anyone creative.

I think every director has a different methodology.

Walking is man’s best medicine.

Walking is a man’s best medicine.

In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.

I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature.

I notice fashion on other people, I always enjoy it when people try and look their best,

The food, the lesson, the chef, the ingredients – all the best of the best. I see why Le Cordon Bleu is world-renowned.

Nature itself is the best physician.

On ‘Think Like a Man,’ they got the best out of me because they allowed me to bring my own cadences and opinions to the character that I was playing. I think we got the best of that particular character.