A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.
There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.
That's what the holidays are for - for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them. Isn't that the Irish way?
Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to.
Being Irish is very much a part of who I am. I take it everywhere with me.
If it was raining soup the Irish would go out with forks.
Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.
No men and women of the Irish race we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic.
I receive huge support from Irish and British sports fans alike and it is greatly appreciated. Likewise I feel I have a great affinity with the American sports fans. I play most of my golf in the U.S. nowadays and I am incredibly proud to have won the U.S. Open and U.S. PGA Championship in the last two years.
If one could only teach the English how to talk and the Irish how to listen society here would be quite civilized.
It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
But let's just say I'm Irish. I grew up in the 1950s. Religion had a very tight iron fist.
London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble we had severe energy problems we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.
But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.
As they say one thing led to another and ultimately the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations which ironically began six years ago this week.
But if republicans are to prevail if the peace process is to be successfully concluded and Irish sovereignty and re-unification secured then we have to set the agenda - no-one else is going to do that.