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I think there's something about the Irish experience - that we had to have a sense of humor or die.

I went further and further back through the centuries to get a sense of perspective but now at least I understand why Irish history evokes such strong passions and emotions.

The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

The Irish seem to have more fire about them than the Scots.

To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.

Again and again, I find something eerie in many Irish occasions - the unrelenting whiteness, the emotional tribal attachments, the violent prejudices lurking beneath apparently pleasant social surfaces, the cosy smugness of belonging.