QUOTES OF 2007

Who said what in 2007? The funniest, wittiest, most memorable comments made to Irish Timeswriters Michael Dwyer, Michael Dervan, Michael Seaver, Aidan Dunne, Ray Comiskey, Jim Carroll, Peter Crawley, Donald Clarke, Siobhán Long, Tony Clayton-Lea

"Yes, I packed my lunch. My husband wasn't put off. He got used to it. He thought it was hilarious to see me dressed as Dylan, although he didn't particularly want to kiss me with stubble over my face."- Cate Blanchetton wearing a sock inside her trousers to play Bob Dylan

"I don't write for an unknown audience, I write for an audience that's basically a double of myself. And I think most composers do." - Composer John Adams

"I feel that playing the music has given me a deep sense of belonging, which might be a curse as much as a blessing. It's rooted in the landscape and in the people. My music is like my accent. It's who I am." - Christy McNamara, Clare concertina and box player, and photographer

"The last thing I expected was for the people I was writing about to become the audience. They were the people whose skin I was trying to get under."- Paul Howard, aka Ross O'Carroll Kelly

"It's very dangerous to get bored with oneself. Upset or disappointed, yes, but never bored." - Iarla Ó Lionáird

"Owen is good. He's in good shape. He's definitely on to the next chapter." - Wes Anderson, director of The Darjeeling Limited, on the attempted suicide of Owen Wilson, who has starred in all his movies

"Of course there's nothing wrong with 'the now'," he says, "but who we are, no matter who we are, it's the past that's brought us here. I think if we lose contact with that completely, we lose our compass, we lose a sense of who we are." - Actor Seán McGinley

"I've seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn't make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure." - Ben Affleck

"We have never been one of those bands who want to play music for rock star reasons. We've always been quite confrontational live and wanting to push those songs to new places. I know people go on about how theatrical the shows are, but it's not Broadway. It's always about the songs and the mood they create." - Regine Chassagne, Arcade Fire

"The songs are full of emotion, and hopes and pain laid bare. We all know what it's like to desperately want something we cannot have, and what it means to be left behind, or to sacrifice everything for something you think you want, only to realise too late what you want." - Bill Condon, director of screen musical Dreamgirls

"I don't think the cosmos would shed a tear over the extinction of this species. The ambivalence that I have about ageing is that while I recognise the transience of things, nonetheless, things matter to me, now. When I'm in the middle of a song, life matters!" - Liam Clancy

"I don't know that I'm 'hangdog'. That suggests someone skulking around, unengaged. I'm not. I'm 'engaged', believe me. I have just got a slightly sad face." - Actor Stephen Rea

"Even when there was no longer any need to speak metaphorically, everything still tends to be interpreted as if the real meaning is beneath the surface, no matter how straightforward the statement." - Dr Dorota Folga Januszewska, co-curator of Paintings from Poland at the National Gallery of Ireland

"It was the most glorious time I've spent in anybody's musical company, because it was Johann Sebastian Bach and Glenn Gould on a daily basis. I couldn't wait till late at night, I would get to the next variation, and see where it took me." - Dmitry Sitkovetskyon arranging Bach's Goldberg Variations for string trio

"That's the most comfortable place for me. In the beginning, yes, I was nervous going on stage. I was not a natural performer. I really had to acquire that skill." - Comedian Jerry Seinfeld

"We did King Learwith country and western accents. In other words, Edmund sounded like Johnny Cash - only a woman." - Maverick theatre director Lee Breur

"One of the things the Republicans in this country kept saying was: it's time for the liberals to shut up and support our president. And I thought, you know, we will not be silenced." - Pianist, composer and orchestrator Jim McNeely

"There are things I just can't do any more. I can't dance the way I used to when I was 21." - Jean Butler

"Immigrant communities have a very rich understanding of their cultural worth, of the trappings of their music, their belief systems, their dress codes, their stories. They cherish them. But what they find in England, by comparison, is a vast cultural void. So they can't engage English people on an equal footing. The indigenous culture isn't able to meet other cultures on an equal basis." - Chris Wood, English folk singer/songwriter

"Fusion is a scientific term and when you talk about fusion in art it implies that the individual elements have melted and lost their identity." - Sonia Sabri, kathak dancer

"The notion that it glorifies the festival in some way to present new work is actually a somewhat old-fashioned and outmoded idea." - Loughlin Deegan, artistic director of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

"I was so taken aback by the poetry in these sean-nós songs: even something as simple as 'trathnónín' (meaning a 'little' evening). It's such a pity that that poetry is understood by so few." - Donnacha Dennehy, composer

"It made sense to me that the emotion I got out of seeing Joe Cocker singing With a Little Help From My Friends was nothing different from hearing Joe Heaney singing Skibbereen." - Kevin Burke, fiddler, formerly of The Bothy Band

"I'd like to see my president go to jail. If this was a movie we'd know who the bad guy is, but, because it's reality, we bow the knee and call that bowing down courage. He is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours!" - Sean Penn

"Tom was just so vital. There was no one like him. He was a fantastic actor, but was very humble about it, and he really gave himself to every role." - director Paddy Breathnachon Tom Murphy, who died aged 39 in October 2007

"They plough into the music like Panzer divisions - battalions even." - Flute player, Seamus Tanseyon Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann's approach to the teaching of traditional music

"The only part I hate is raising the money. It takes longer and longer. It is worse now than ever. In Hollywood, they say the art is in the deal. Well, it is." - Producer Noel Pearson

"Because I was playing Idi Amin, who dealt with the colonisation issue, I became aware of this internalised conflict of what it means to be torn between cultures, what it means to be taken over by other cultures." - Forest Whitaker, best actor Oscar winner for The Last King of Scotland

"Being in London and skint was horrible." - Pianist, Phil Ware

"Just because I'm from North Harrow some people want me to be a proper chav. I'm not from a poor background, but we have a normal size house, and my mum is a nurse. I had to go to work otherwise I wouldn't be able to have done anything - there wasn't enough money for me to skive off. As for the Vicki Pollard thing - I don't let stuff like that bother me. I mean, she's a bit of a retard, isn't she?" - Kate Nash

"People say to me that I must have had terrible rows in RTÉ, but I never had any rows at all. I never fight with people at all. Couldn't be bothered." - Larry Gogan

"It was one of those moments when an angel walked through the room, as we say. Those moments are frozen in time within your personality. You will carry it always with you." - Saxophonist Jan Garbarek on hearing tenor saxophonist Ben Websterplaying Stardust

"Jo is not looking over my shoulder, but she is there as a consigliere when needed." - Harry Potter producer David Heymanon JK Rowling

"I remember it was so cold during one workshop [ in Dublin] that people were getting physically ill." - Jerry Pearson, choreographer

"If you were a child and every time your relatives had a few drinks, they'd be running after you with scary faces and big hands to pull you back to sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina, you wouldn't like singing either." - Roisin Murphy

"Each time I start something, I don't know how to do it until I do it." - During his exhibition at Imma, German artist Thomas Demandexplains his technique

"The not wanting to go into the sexuality thing is more about self-preservation and self-respect than it is about anything else. I think there is a lot of pride and honour to be taken from the fact that you don't whore yourself out in every single possible way in order to get a story out of every angle." - Mika

"No, I do not have am eating disorder. I have never had an eating disorder. It is a lie. It is slanderous. I have publicly denied it on several occasions. How do you think it feels to be asked if I have a mental illness?" - Keira Knightley

"When you're on the road like this and you do it over and over again, you have to work out if you're running towards something or if you're running from something. I think I'm running towards something, but I know a lot of people who are running away." - Josh Ritter

"Realist painting has to do with leaving out a lot of detail. I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out. But what happens is that the mind fills in what's missing . . . Painting is a way of making you see what I saw." - American artist Alex Katz

"I had always been more interested in playing and improvising than sitting down at a desk and writing out a piece. I'd always found it more fun to play, and the other a little bit tedious. I always had trouble with the decisions." - Terry Riley

"At home I'm this normal castrated husband, but on set, she has to listen to me. We have a similar sense of humour and she's a very daring, brilliant actress." - Knocked Up director Judd Apatow on working with his wife, Leslie Mann

"Ash's songs are romantic to a degree, a little indie Venus among the power chords. Where does the romance and reflection come from? I suppose we're faggy straight guys. That's just the way we are - nerdy, introspective guys who read Kerouac more than Playboy." - Ash's Tim Wheeler

"It was a problem in the Soviet Union that it was not allowed for the Jews to study some professions. There were quotas for Jews. It was not official, but everybody knew about it." - Pianist Jascha Nemtsov

"There are days when I think: what if I just checked out? What if I grew a beard and went off to live somewhere remote? I have often wondered about the freedom that would bring." - David Schwimmer

"Of course it's f**king commercial! Hello! Everything in the arts is commercial. Everything! Do you think Michelangelo painted for free? Everybody got paid. The Bard wrote a play, he got the door. It is commercial." - Arts manager turned entrepreneur Rory Concannon

"In life we don't play a lot. That's why I choreograph." - Martine Pisani

"Hey, I always say: if you want a quiet life, become a monk." - Michael Caine

"I just wish, maybe, that I'd started conducting earlier. I was about 40 when I started. Apart from that I don't really have any regrets. Is that bad?" - Neville Marriner

"I always say my age is connected with three Cs. In here, cuore, which means the heart. Up here, cervello, which is the brain. And, of course, down here: the coglioni. I no feel my age, I tell you." - Veteran producer Dino De Laurentiis

"I'm one of the people who has had the most scholarships in the world. I've lived, like, 12 years from scholarships. They make a lot of jokes about it in my house." - Arnau Tomas Realp, cellist of the Cuarteto Casals

"I had this rolling motif and one garda stood in front of me so I continued to roll against his leg. He became apoplectic and let a roar, 'Get up you big f**king muppet before I lift you!'." - Choreographer and Dublin Fringe director Wolfgang Hoffmann

"I'm trying to make something that is unequivocally of its time. That is, in terms of tools, and techniques, and even in the idea of a virtual being, we're pushing at the limits of what's possible." - Sculptor Anthony Gormleyon his proposed gigantic latticework sculpture in the River Liffey

"I do an exercise sometimes in teaching, where I've developed a tape of eight rare moments from operas, very specific dramatic things, and I play them to people and say, now write down what you think is happening. The most amazing thing about music is that nobody has ever got one right." - Opera director, Keith Warner

"I'm a jazz musician by education and vocation, but I don't think jazz should [ dictate] what I want to do." - Trumpeter Dave Douglas

"I always look for calmness in complexity. I suppose it's because I'm a New Yorker. I don't leave New York for my meditation but try to find it within the overcrowded city." - Sara Rudner, choreographer

"Young songwriters don't appear to have a sense of history. When you don't know what came before you, how can you know where you're going?" - Alan Bergman, songwriter

"What's more vulnerable than being naked, especially when you're out in the cold on the street? I agreed to it as long as I could pick the towel, and I picked the smallest, most floral towel I could find." - Actor Josh Hartnetton one of his costumes for Lucky Number Slevin

"Young people need to re-engage with politics. The life of democracy depends on it. We've left it to the stuff shirts, and obviously they haven't been minding the store." - Emilio Estevez, writer-director of Bobby, dealing with the assassination of Robert Kennedy

"I think it's a bit of a misnomer for traditional music to be always understood as this kind of just driving thing, because it's so one-dimensional, you know? And it does Irish music no service at all to have people always play it like that." - Fiddle player Martin Hayes

"You can find out a lot sitting in the barber's." - Dizzee Rascal

"The litmus test for me, for good art, for good painting, sculpture, poetry, literature or music is that it tells the truth on some basic level. That doesn't have to be on a literal level, but it resonates, not necessarily with everybody, but with the big, middle part of the bell curve." - Jeffrey Foucault, singer/songwriter

"I'm interested in what the body logs as memory and what physical traits describe you as a person." - Choreographer, Wendy Houston

"My show is an anti-show and the audience have to want to listen. I'm sitting down, there's only one of me, I don't talk much to the audience and it is very quiet. I wouldn't be able to do that kind of show if people didn't know me and my material." - Jose Gonzalez

"When you come back to a country that you've left, you're in a very peculiar situation because, in a way, you don't belong to that country any more, even though when I'm in America I feel I don't belong there either." - Actor Gabriel Byrne

"When I think of Britain, I don't think of these lofty ideals which once held sway like the stoic upper lip. I think of girls on a Saturday night outside kebab shops stabbing each other with stiletto heels or guys smashing glasses into someone's face. I think of shows like Big Brother which celebrate people's discomfort and anguish or kids committing these terrifying happy slapping acts of brutality to each other at the drop of a hat." - Kele Okereke, Bloc Party

"In some ways, it's not surprising that people are coming to the theatre for a mind-changing experience. It's really not acknowledged how much of a crisis we are in with materialism." - Ríonach Ní Néill, choreographer

"There was a sense that something good was happening alright because we were having so many hits. We were bombarding the world with these songs that were truly popular. But we didn't know we were making history. If I had known that, I'd have saved every single scrap of paper I'd ever written a song on or scribbled an idea on or all the tapes I recorded."- Smokey Robinson

"Looking back on it, it was an extraordinary childhood. At the time it seemed normal to me because I didn't know anything else - to have Dirk Bogarde as a godfather, to have Katharine Hepburn flicking stones in the pond, or Brigitte Bardot in the swimming pool." - Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas

"My dad isn't sure how I make a living because I'm not in the newspapers or on music shows any more. The world is bigger than England, however, but for the large part, yes, people don't know who I am. What are you gonna do? Unless you're a superstar act that attracts young people because it might be their last chance to see you before you die, then it's fairly typical. I'm astonished that I have any audience at all, to be honest." - Graham Parker

"The issue of venues for dance has not been addressed strategically within Ireland.I'm not saying this to be provocative, that's a matter of fact." - Dermot McLaughlin, chairman International Dance Festival Ireland