Fiona Shaw Quotes

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

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

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

"I certainly had no intention of playing a man."

"So I just play the character, I play the lines."

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

"Theater dates very quickly."

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

"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."

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

"This whole tribal loyalty seems to have gone."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can hardly decide what plays I should be in."

"There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously."

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

"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."

"One moment cannot be the most important."

"My mother taught me to read."

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

"There's something about the Irish that is remarkable."

"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."

"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."

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