Fiona Shaw quotes:

My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.

I once saw my mother playing Mary Magdalene in a parish event. But she had to put the role aside in order to go and front the choir who were singing at the same occasion. She left the stage halfway through the Crucifixion.

Like a lot of Irish households we read a lot of Irish history. It was almost Soviet, raising the next generation with a mythic view of their history.

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.

I'm not afraid of chaos and I'm happy talking to strangers. I really love not knowing where I'm going.

To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.

Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.

There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true.

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way.

Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.

The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.

Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy.

Theater is dangerously open to repetition. Its exciting when you hit on a new way.

A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.

I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.

There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously.

And by endlessly sanitizing our feelings, we actually feed a disgruntled nation.

There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.

One moment cannot be the most important.

I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.

A relationship is sent by God and accident.

The energy released by it is enormous and it becomes quite addictive, the power between the audience and the actor.

I enjoy making films, but my heart is in the stage. Every night you have to be on. There's no second take.

I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity.

I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.

I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.

Now I have begun to get interested in films and I just hope that people start becoming interested in me to do more films.

I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because its repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.

There's something about the Irish that is remarkable.

Theater dates very quickly.

Honestly, I get more recognized for 'Three Men and a Little Lady' than 'Harry Potter'.

Every generation is obsessed with the decade before they were born.

I can hardly decide what plays I should be in.

I certainly had no intention of playing a man.

Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while.

I just think that things should be allowed to run their course, and not turned into a Disney ride.

I had a ball doing Harry Potter.

I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born.

I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it.

This whole tribal loyalty seems to have gone.