They said it this year . . .

Irish Times interviews in 2004 ranged from the insightful to the hilarious. Here's a taster.

"As scientists say about theories that are junk: it's not even wrong. Bogus hypotheses often help to uncover the correct explanation. This couldn't even do that"

- Journalist Christopher Hitchens dismisses Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, talking to Donald Clarke

"It's not so much about religious passion - it's about any passion. Passion for art, passion for anything that isn't just some kind of placebo. In 2004, everything seems less passionate a lot of the time"

- Sculptor Dorothy Cross talking to Arminta Wallace about directing Pergolesi's Stabat Mater on Valentia Island

"I love stories. I like big novels that have stories. Story is undervalued, don't you think? I read anything for story, from comics to Sherlock Holmes"

- British debut novelist Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, talking to Eileen Battersby

"You only have to look at the simple logic that no music can be born complete. It has to evolve and develop from one thing to the next, and it always does. If there isn't motion in tradition, it's like a photograph, a still"

- Martin Hayes talking to Siobhán Long

"It's just what one expects. Though possibly slightly worse"

- Poet Paul Muldoon talking to Arminta Wallace about Las Vegas

"Everyone I knew here moved on. Yet I see people now and I say, oh, I recognise that face. And then I realise that I'm seeing the daughter. The daughter, with the face of her mother that I knew when I was a young woman"

- Actor Marie Mullen talking to Belinda McKeon about returning to Galway and Druid Lane Theatre

"We couldn't do Top of the Pops because it's filmed on a Thursday, and Thursdays in Newport, where we're from, are when you go to Rocky's Hamburger Palace for the special"

- Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain tell Brian Boyd about getting their priorities right

"It would be unlikely that I would be cast, and if I was I would be the swarthy foreign guy who tries to make a pass at Helena Bonham Carter, or the carriage driver who makes an impertinent remark to Dame Maggie Smith"

- Alfred Molina talking to Donald Clarke about Merchant Ivory films

"I could get into trouble with Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Kurds. I'll have to wait and see"

- Novelist Louis de Bernières talking to Arminta Wallace on the publication of Birds Without Wings

"He put his foot on it and a banjo in his hand and he said 'I'm ready'. I knew he was ready, but I wasn't ready. Because his voice was like a whirlwind that just blew me across the room when he started to sing"

- Philip King tells Shane Hegarty about recording Tom Waits

"If they had said 'look, you know, you can't write plays. Go away. We're sorry we asked you', I would have said 'OK, no problem'. But they were very nice. They said 'yeah, that's fine'. And then they put me through a wringer"

- Colm Tóibín tells Arminta Wallace about delivering the first draft of his first play, Beauty in a Broken Place to the Abbey

"I knew nothing about contemporary dance and I'm finding it's like opening this huge door to another world. On one hand it's really exciting but on the other I think: 'Why didn't I do this 10 years ago?'"

- Jean Butler talks to Michael Seaver

"Irish theatre seems to have a terror of meeting politics head-on, without hedging it round with metaphor or dressing it up in costumes"

- Gerard Stembridge talking to Arminta Wallace about Ireland's political theatre - or the lack of it

"Things have happened in my life where people have gotten hurt, and if I had the opportunity to undo that hurt, I would. But generally I wouldn't change anything . . . although maybe I wouldn't have sung some of the songs in the high keys on the second Moving Hearts album"

- Christy Moore talking to Siobhán Long

"You could actually hospitalise most of the practitioners of arts in this country, they're that stressed by having to perpetrate a falsehood"

- Mannix Flynn talks to Shane Hegarty

"When I get nominated for anything, I'm always shocked that I've put it over on them again. It's really just a miracle to me that I can invent these characters that seem new to people, and that they're not completely sick of me"

- Meryl Streep talks to Michael Dwyer about having more Oscar nominations than any other actor

"Temple Bar doesn't need to be rescued. It is in no way some recognition that the area has failed, only that success has caused us to rethink how the area is working and how it might work better"

- Architect Sean Harrington talks to Shane Hegarty about the urban framework plan commissioned by Temple Bar Properties

"I was actually quite content not just with the low expectations, but the no expectations. That is pretty useful to have, rather than high expectations"

- Seán Doran tells Michael Dervan about reaction to his appointment as artistic director and chief executive of English National Opera

"In some bookstores, I'm in 'fiction', in others I'm in the 'gay' corner. I could just as easily be described as a Jewish writer. I wonder which is more important?"

- US novelist David Leavitt talking to Eileen Battersby

"My motives were anything but artistic - I reckoned there was a decent chance of losing my virginity without spending too much on bus fares"

- Actor Brian McCardie tells Jane Coyle why he joined a local drama group as a teenager

"If music doesn't make that little part of your back crawl, or give you that intense thrill of knowing that you're alive in the world for an instant in time, then it's wasted"

- Tony MacMahon talking to Siobhán Long

"I don't try to impose myself on a piece. I want to interpret it"

- US violinist Hilary Hahn talking to Eileen Battersby

"I study Beethoven, play Beethoven, teach Beethoven. I have to say, yes, he is my favourite composer"

- Irish pianist John O'Conor talking to Eileen Battersby

"It's like I am Methuselah. It is incredible, isn't it? Aren't I 50 yet? But, for an actress, being 38 really is like being 70. You count these things like dog years"

- The 38-year-old Diane Lane tells Donald Clarke about constantly being described as "well-preserved"

"Now, with the new material, you don't need to be negative. On the contrary, you have all the difficulty of being positive, because you have so many possibilities in front of you"

- Composer Pierre Boulez tells Michael Dervan how computers and technology have changed things

"I make a video for him and then I am not allowed to show it. I wish he could read this. I wish I could have him in front of me to say it. Plus he is not very strong, so I am not in danger of him beating me up. If he wants to fight, I will punch his other eye - and then he will have two dead eyes"

- Film director Michel Gondry talks frankly to Donald Clarke about Radiohead's Thom Yorke

"It is funny. Ever since Kill Bill came out the press hasn't wanted to bend my words any more. They actually want to use the good quotes"

- David Carradine tells Donald Clarke about being rediscovered by Quentin Tarantino

"We can't follow the steps of the Arts Plan. We've inherited it and it looks like, we don't know for sure, but like we'll need a new one"

- Olive Braiden, chairperson of the Arts Council, talking to Belinda McKeon

"I talk too much and I know how to shut people up and I was interested in helping people, so I considered law"

- Estelle talking to Jim Carroll about why she nearly became a lawyer

"I think some people must think I live in a cave and am a totally mad bitch or something. It's always that 'dark, melancholic' type of review I get. People must think I'm a right nutter"

- Polly Harvey talking to Brian Boyd

"We don't do rock credibility. That leather-trousered rock image isn't for us. We know who we are - we're middle-class English white boys who went to private schools"

- Tim Rice-Oxley, of Keane, talks to Brian Boyd about his lack of tattoos, body piercings and "credibility"

"Nude scenes are really hard if you are stupid enough to do them sober. I have never been that stupid"

- Paul Bettany discusses tricks of the trade with Donald Clarke

"People oftenask me why I hate old women. Because I am one and I hate that"

- Joan Rivers talking to Donald Clarke

"The real thing stopped having all meaning. It is like when you say the same word over and over again it loses all meaning. I no longer think of it as this job that I did. It is now just this recurring question that I am asked"

- Colin Firth talking to Donald Clarke about that scene in Pride and Prejudice

"We delight in gossip. You can hear things from children, or drinkers, or beggars, or loners, that are thrilling, just thrilling. In Ireland people don't talk about 'the book'. They talk about 'yer man' "

- Poet Brendan Kennelly talking to Arminta Wallace

"My son came home and said that I was on the cover of a magazine because I was famous, and I had to say: 'No. I am on the cover of a magazine because that is my job' "

- Julianne Moore tells Donald Clarke about keeping her feet on the ground

"Lots of people ask us 'why are there no men in your group?', and we reply: 'Why don't you ask The Chieftains or The Wolfe Tones a similar question?' "

- Seosaimhín Begley, of Macalla, talking to Siobhán Long

"I was brought up to believe that knowledge was power and music was everything, and I don't see the logic in a self-imposed ghetto, which is what the music media try to do"

- Eliza Carthy talking to Siobhán Long

"Irish traditional music has a lot of ornamentation and embellishments which are exactly like what you find in baroque music, but nobody seems to realise this"

- Adrian Mantu, of Con Tempo String Quartet, talking to Siobhán Long

"I learned the fiddle in toilets in Germany. My wife says it was the most excruciating time in our relationship. I was banished to the loo to practice. There was a nice echo there, so you could hear yourself and know whether you were in tune"

- Gerry "Banjo" O'Connor talking to Siobhán Long

"I have never met anyone who didn't have more girlfriends than I had. I wish I had lived the life that they say I did"

- Omar Sharif, talking to Donald Clarke about his reputation as a great lover

"I sometimes think, should I lash back at someone who has been unfair to me in the press? Then I stop and think, if I was in my own movie, would I like me if I lashed back like that every time? Maybe not"

- Kevin Costner talking to Donald Clarke

"I advise those people not to come to the shows. It's simple: don't come to see us. My god, stay in a dark room, play a Doors record and light a candle to Jim . Stay in the maudlin, morbid darkness of decaying flesh"

- Ray Manzarek, of The Doors, talks to Tony Clayton-Lea about critics of The Doors of the 21st Century

"It's not that I don't care about people - in fact, I very much care a lot about other people, but I get caught up in my own stuff, which makes me very hard to live with. When you've been married as many times as I have, you kinda figure out that maybe it's your fault"

- Steve Earle talking to Tony Clayton-Lea

"I didn't think it would get put on at all, because I thought the language was very violent. I think there's humour in it, but it's black. I just didn't think that the way I approached it anyone would touch it"

- Stuart Carolan tells Shane Hegarty about his first play, Defender of the Faith

"You get in so much trouble for the things you do believe in, why would you make up things you don't believe in?"

- Julie Burchill, talking to Donald Clarke, denies that she adopts extreme opinions simply to cause offence

"It's just a movie. It is no different from going to an art gallery and looking at a painting. I don't know of any movie or painting that has changed the world. There are still people starving"

- Billy Bob Thornton discusses the potential - and soon realised - commercial failure of The Alamo with Donald Clarke

"The Irish love to be loved. They want us to listen to their music and revel in their songs, but they are not so keen to listen and love in return"

- Jean-Pierre Pichard, director of Lorient Interceltic Festival, talking to Jane Coyle

"The arts are under pressure - they can't be used for social engineering, they can't go in and solve social problems. A community that is not getting behind culture is a community that knows it's not a community"

- Adrian Dunbar, talking to Jane Coyle about Belfast's unsuccessful bid to be European Capital of Culture

"Australia is a country with enormous sense of possibility. But it is also a country that is totally empty: empty of ideas, of culture, of pollution"

- Cinematographer Christopher Doyle talking to Donald Clarke about the land of his birth

"You can't force people to understand the grand intellectual might of your brain, which is what some bands try to do"

- Alex Kapranos, of Franz Ferdinand, talking to Jim Carroll

"The people who are buying our music here at home are backing us with goodwill, but if they don't see us moving on, they might move on themselves. They get bored of seeing us fail too. We're all grateful for our success in Ireland, but we know it can't keep going on like this"

- Mundy talking to Jim Carroll

"I think of Je T'Aime - Moi Non Plus as my visiting card. It will also be my end card, in that I know very well what they'll put on the television when I go out feet first"

- Actor and singer Jane Birkin, talking to Arminta Wallace

"The way music is branded these days seems to sell it short. It's not really about commerce or ring tones. Music is a language and I think it has been hijacked and turned into a commodity and a lifestyle"

- Paul Buchanan, of The Blue Nile, talking to Jim Carroll

"It would be a place to escape to where I'm not reminded of what I do and where I can be a plonker who likes to fart around and enjoy people and nature and art and animals and chilling out and the beautiful things in life"

- Damien Rice tells Jim Carroll about his idea of nirvana

"I like these roles which you can get your teeth into. I've done my 20 years of tragic heroines. After a certain amount of that, you just want to do something with a bit of balls. Oh, did I say that? Surely not . . ."

- Mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright tells Arminta Wallace about the wicked stepmother in Opera Ireland's Jenufa

"The thing is that Hollywood does not care about black or white, it cares about green: the dollar . . . Look, in Hollywood they would sell their grandmothers for a good opening weekend"

- Will Smith tells Donald Clarke how he overcame racism in the film industry

"It's not easy to play new music but it has to be done. . . When something new comes along, like Radiohead and Björk, people who have something new to say and a new way to say it, audiences get excited"

- Esbjörn Svensson, from EST, talking to Jim Carroll

"As soon as the war seemed imminent, all the American and British productions pulled out of Morocco. As we were the only film still shooting there, there was enormous goodwill towards us there"

- Irish film director Alan Gilsenan tells Michael Dwyer about makingTimbuktu

"I spent the past three and a half months in a play at a theatre with 176 seats. That paid me 250 bucks a week. Nobody heard about it, certainly nobody big in the film business, but my heartbeat was certainly in it"

- Actor William Hurt talking to Michael Dwyer

"I really had to dig deep to get into that guy and it does affect you when you're playing someone like that for five weeks. Even the smell off that tracksuit I wore was disgusting by the end - but I wouldn't let them wash it"

- Tom Jordan Murphy tells Michael Dwyer about playing a Dublin junkie in Adam and Paul

"I want to have an instrument where I can realise what I am doing, on which I play my own mistakes and not those of the instrument"

- Pianist Alfred Brendel talks to Michael Dervan about pianos

"There has to be ego involved in this. Let's face it. You don't wake up one day and go to your career guidance counsellor and say: 'Conducting is great - OK, I'll do that then' "

- David Brophy tells Michael Dervan about becoming a conductor

"It's rather like, if you're Jackson Pollock, and you've splashed paint around all your life, and suddenly you've got a pencil and paper and that's all you've got, or ink and paper, where a mistake sticks out a mile"

- Composer Gavin Bryars tells Michael Dervan about the challenges of writing his Laudas in simple style

"If somebody came in while I was writing and asked do I know God exists, I could say yes, I know God exists. But if I was out having drinks with some friends and they asked me, I wouldn't be able to answer. I just don't know anything then"

- Composer John Tavener talking to Michael Dervan

"My agent will get phone calls from cosmetics companies and the first thing they say sometimes is: 'How is her weight currently?' And my agent will just say 'thank-you' and put the phone down"

- Kate Winslet bemoans the continuing interest in her weight to Donald Clarke

"There is no more satisfying vindication than this movie for all those times we were told: 'Get off your bloody arse, stop watching telly and do something' "

- Jeremy Dyson, of The League of Gentlemen, talking to Donald Clarke

"He was a mixture of enthusiasm and iconoclasm. My memory is of him running around with his eyes wide open - fearless, fun and boyish"

- Guardian journalist Robert Armstrong recalls writer Stewart Parker as a student to Jane Coyle

"I like to be moved emotionally when I go to the theatre. Work that is too explicit often fails to move me and I'm likely to feel patronised if there is no space for the audiences' own imagination"

- New Dublin Fringe Festival director Wolfgang Hoffmann talks to Michael Seaver

"A bit like Bobby walking out of the shower in Dallas!"

- Choreographer and opera director David Bolger tells Michael Seaver about the happy ending in Orfeo Ed Euridice

"I played a dead girl's dress in the last work we did in Bremen. It might sound a bit weird, but that was the role and we spent a long time talking about that 'character' "

- Dancer and choreographer Ríonach Ní Néill talking to Michael Seaver

"We weren't happy when we were the only shop in town, and we would be much happier if there was more competition"

- Clare Duignan, RTÉ television's director of programmes, talking to Shane Hegarty