I'm a product of my Irish culture, and I could no more lose that than I could my sense of identity.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Being Irish is very much a part of who I am. I take it everywhere with me.
I'm just a true Irish boy at heart.
I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.
I'm proud to be Irish.
I'm first and foremost an Irishman, by birth, by nature, by soul, but an American citizen through and through as well.
I'm still a proud Irishman, of course, but I've become an American citizen. I'm very, very proud of that.
Making an Irishness to be proud of in a real Republic. It is the vision of a real Republic where life and language, where ideals and experience have the ring of authenticity which we need now as we go forward.
The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.
I don't really go around feeling very Irish at all. I don't go to Irish pubs. I've lived so many places, and I'm still so curious about the bigger world. It's grand to be alive in a time when mobility is so accessible.
The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.