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Ireland is such an amazing country, and I have this little dream in the back of my head that someday I'll end up living there. When I've established myself in America and I don't need to live near the action, so to speak, and if you're good, the work will come to you. I feel very Irish; maybe that's why I've been so lucky with my career.

I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.

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 quarrels and begin to solve them in ways other than just splitting apart.

I can't say enough about Ireland. I can't. I'd move there.

You are not speaking for yourself, but for Ireland.

Ireland has made its choice for the future and it has chosen the version of Irishness it will build. I know, and I will work with head and heart to be part of it with all of you in creating that future one in which all of us can be part of and part of us too.

Ireland and its people have much to be proud of. Yet every land and its people have moments of shame. Dealing with the failures of our past, as a country, as a Church, or as an individual is never easy. Our struggle to heal the wounds of decades of violence, injury and painful memory in Northern Ireland are more than ample evidence of this.

I'm first and foremost an Irishman, by birth, by nature, by soul, but an American citizen through and through as well.

The more I see, hear, and think in Europe, the more I wish for every measure that can ensure to the United States dignity, power, and public confidence.

We would not give up our own country - Ireland - if we were to get the whole world as an estate, and the Country of the Young along with it.