It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, C...
The Priest: Would they ever harm an innocent person for any reason? [of Rocco, who's holding him at gunpoint] Paul Smecker: No, they would never do that. Well, the two Irish guys wouldn't, the Italian guy, he might, he's kind of an idiot.
Paul Smecker: Now, you Irish cops are perking up. That's two sound theories in one day, neither of which deal with abnormally sized men. Kind of makes me feel like Riverdancing. [He proceeds to riverdance]
It was impossible for me to believe that conditions in Europe could be worse than they were in the Polish section of Chicago, and in many Italian and Irish tenements, or that any workshops could be worse than some of those I had seen in our foreign q...
Prejudice in this country is like chapters in a book. Chapter One: Hating the Africans and Indians. Chapter Two: Don't forget the Irish. Chapter Three: Polish jokes."..... "Hispanics? Latinos? Whatever you call us? Maybe we're Chapter Fifteen or Sixt...
The Irish people didn't get on that well with each other either. They hated the Catholics, was the main issue, as I see. You can't blame them for that. If I understand correctly, Catholics do not believe in contraception. So, you know, sex is not rel...
I just wish she knew that if there were two persons, who were imperfect and they knew it, and they weren’t afraid to admit it – if those two persons cared enough about one another to lean upon one another, they’d be stronger together than they ...
He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the...
The sun was already long past the spire when Garrick purchased a mug of coffee from his regular man on the tip of Oxford Street. But his palate had been educated by 21st century coffee, and he judged this mug as bilge water not fit for the Irish.
When I was a kid, if you didn't speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don't think that...
One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-m...
I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrel...
The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target....
My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slow...
You ask people what their ethnicity is, and a lot of Scots-Irish people either don't know or if they know it they just don't acknowledge it. It's not something they really identify with. They're just plain old Americans, plain vanilla. I don't think ...
Muse: Last year I took a Greek ship. 6 million dollars. Captain Richard Phillips: 6 million dollars? So what are you doing here? Muse: Shut up, Irish. Too much talking. Captain Richard Phillips: The problem is not me talking. The problem is you not l...
Zeus Carver: Didn't I hear you say you didn't even like your brother? Simon Gruber: There's a difference, you know, between not liking one's brother and not caring when some dumb Irish flatfoot drops him out of a window.
Bill: Is this it priest, the Pope's new army, a few crusty bitches and a hand full of rag tags? Priest Vallon: Now, now, Bill, you swore this was a battle between warriors, not a bunch of miss nancies, so warriors is what I brought. [various Irish Ga...
One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same ...
I don't hate redheads! The millionaire men - wealthy men - never pick them. Every time I offer them they say no. I could say the most gorgeous redhead in the world and they'll say no, they don't want it. Now if you ask an Irish guy in Ireland, he say...
Naturelle Riviera: One minute ago, you were my friend. Are you drunk? Tell me you've been drinking too much. You're fucking drunk. Frank Slaughtery: I'm Irish. I can't get drunk, all right? I know exactly what I'm saying.
