The Irish Quotes & Sayings

Consider Ireland ... You have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question. — Benjamin Disraeli

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance. — Slavoj Zizek

I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater. — Bob Gunton

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English. — Daniel Radcliffe

The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world. — Norman Mailer

Look at every territorial dispute you care to mention. Northern Ireland, for instance." "Religion in that case," Jamie ventured. "Not just. Religion was the badge of identity, but it wasn't really about whether you went to Mass or to a tub-thumping Protestant chapel. It was a result of the movement of people. The Protestant planters - many of them Scots - replaced the native Irish, remember? Movement of people again. — Alexander McCall Smith

My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself. — David Starkey

My Irish Catholic mother loved romantic movies, provided they ended with a kiss before the screen went dark. If things went any further than that, she'd complain, Why can't they leave something to the imagination? I sort of subscribe to her philosophy when it comes to writing sex. — Catherine Brady

I was for two years a pupil at the Model School in Fort street which was then conducted upon the Irish national system, and if any special religious instruction was given in connection with that system, I do not recollect it. — Edmund Barton

Guard for me my eyes, Jesus, Son of Mary, lest seeing others' wealth make me covetous. Guard for me my ears, lest they harken to slander, lest they listen to folly in the sinful world. Guard for me my heart, O Christ, in Thy love, lest I ponder wretchedly the desire of any iniquity. Guard for me my hands, that they be not stretched out for quarreling, or practice shameful idleness. Guard for me my feet upon the gentle earth. . . . lest they be bent on profitless errands. Amen. - ANCIENT IRISH PRAYER — David P. Gushee

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

The west and southwest of Ireland bore the brunt of the famine. Those areas, including Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon, Galway, Clare, and Cork, were the poorest regions of the island, and the most dependent on subsistence farming. Not coincidentally, these were also the areas that Catholic Irish had been sent to during the Protestant plantation. — Ryan Hackney

For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans. — John F. Kerry

Ghost?" St. Vincent shot him an incredulous glance. "Christ. You're not serious, are you?"
"I'm a Gypsy," Cam replied matter-of-factly. "Of course I believe in ghosts."
"Only half Gypsy. Which led me to assume that the rest of you was at least marginally sane and rational."
"The other half is Irish," Cam said a touch apologetically.
"Christ," St. Vincent said again, shaking his head as he strode away. — Lisa Kleypas

The Georges were fair; they left all to the Government; but Anne was very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannised over the Irish. She died broken-hearted with all the bad things that were going on about her. For Queen Anne was very wicked; oh, very wicked, indeed! — Lady Gregory

Prejudice in this country is like chapters in a book. Chapter One: Hating the Africans and Indians. Chapter Two: Don't forget the Irish. Chapter Three: Polish jokes." ... "Hispanics? Latinos? Whatever you call us? Maybe we're Chapter Fifteen or Sixteen on the East Coast, but we're the preface in the West. — Emilie Richards

The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. — James Joyce

Left alone in a dark room with a pile of money, the Irish decided what they really wanted to do with it was buy Ireland. From each other. An Irish economist named Morgan Kelly, whose estimates of Irish bank losses have been the most prescient, has made a back-of-the-envelope calculation that puts the property-related losses of all Irish banks at roughly 106 billion euros. (Think $10.6 trillion.) At the rate money flows into the Irish treasury, Irish bank losses alone would absorb every penny of Irish taxes for the next four years. — Michael Lewis

The vice and drunkenness among the lowering laboring classes is growing to frightful excess, and the multitudes of low Irish Catholics ... restricted by poverty in their own country run riot in this ... as long as we are overwhelmed with Irish immigrants, so long will the evil abound. — John Pintard

The Irish job was something that had to be sorted out. — Jack Charlton

Be it in the rough-and-tumble world of inner-city politics or the bare-knuckle boxing ring, the Irish rightly earned their fightin' moniker. — Rashers Tierney

Food cost rather than the absolute absence of food can often be the key factor in shortages and possible starvation. During the height of the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, Ireland was actually exporting food to England. The peasants starved because they could not afford to buy food at the local prices, enhanced by the loss of the potato crop. There was enough food, in absolute terms, to keep everyone alive; they died because they had no money to buy it. — Peter Wadhams

There can be no such things as an Irish nationalist accepting the loyalist veto and partition. You cannot claim to be an Irish nationalist if you consent to an internal six county settlement and if you are willing to negotiate the state of Irish society with a foreign government. — Gerry Adams

My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials. — Elvis Costello

Jim Rosato was recently married, to a Greek nurse. Rosato was half Irish and half Italian, and there was a pool on at the 1st as to which of the two would arrive at work wearing the other's skin as a hat within the year. — Warren Ellis

In a move that will remain in Irish annals as a stigma comparable to the potato famine, the Dublin government succumbed to ECB blackmail: make the German creditors of Ireland's commercial banks whole, even a bank that was closed down and thus no longer systemically important for Ireland's financial sector, or else. — Yanis Varoufakis

Well, they may not be civilized, but they certainly are confident - and this confidence is one of the open-handed pleasures of early Irish literature. — Thomas Cahill

White, is not a race, it is a color, European, is not a race, it is a place named after the goddess Europa. Caucasian, is not a race, it is a place and mountain range. Gentile, is not a race, it is a biblical name that was given to describe Aryans as non-Jews. Aryan is the biological correct name of our race! Aryan is who we are by blood and the genetic source of our being and beginning. All the numerous names, German, French, Irish, Scotch, Polish, Italian, Norwegian and on and on are simply the many tribal names of the Aryan people. — Ron McVan

I love my heritage! I have my mother, who is an Irish-Italian, and my father who is African, so I have the taste buds of an Italian and the spice of an African. — Alicia Keys

The glory of the old Irish nation, which in our hour will grow young and strong again. Should we fail, the country will not be worth more than it is now. The sword of famine is less sparing than the bayonet of the soldier. — Thomas Francis Meagher

I will be a President for all the people, whether they voted for me or not, whether they are young or old and particularly for the Irish abroad. I'm looking forward to it and I think it will be exciting and wonderful. — Michael D. Higgins

Blue grass was the outgrowth of Irish music. As a matter of fact a lot the tunes, a lot of the melodies and the jigs ... have different names but are actually the same tunes. — Keith Getty

But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible. — Anne McCaffrey

The English imposed their language on Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and they weren't terribly nice about it. — Howard Tomb

I like Irish pubs, except for all the loud music and drinking, and people acting like idiots. — Dov Davidoff

One way to see the constructed nature of reality is to notice how the definitions of different "races" change historically, by including groups at one time that were excluded in another. The Irish, for example, were long considered by the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of England and the United States to be members of a nonwhite "race", as were Italians, Jews, and people from a number of Eastern European countries. As such, immigrants from these groups to England and the United States were excluded and subjugated and exploited in much the same way that blacks were. — Allan G. Johnson

All good things originate with the Creator God, he'd been taught, and the Song of Life was no exception. — Sandi Layne

Typhus appeared in the winter of 1846. The Irish called it the black fever because it made victims' faces swollen and dark. It was incredibly contagious, spread by lice, which were everywhere. Many people lived in one-room cottages, humans and animals all huddled together, and there was no way to avoid lice jumping from person to person. The typhus bacteria also traveled in louse feces, which formed an invisible dust in the air. Anyone who touched an infected person, or even an infected person's clothes, could become the disease's next victim. Typhus was the supreme killer of the famine; in the winter of 1847, thousands of people died of it every week. Another — Ryan Hackney

But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that's why we came to America. — Bono

There is a feel about Galway you can wear around your shoulders like a cloak. It hangs in the air with its dampness; it walks the cobblestone streets and stands in the doorways of its gray stone buildings. It blows in with the mist from the Atlantic and lingers incessantly at every corner. I have never been able to walk the streets of Galway without feeling some unnamed presence accompanying me. — Claire Fullerton

The Danes and the Irish have a great simpatico, that's for sure. — Pierce Brosnan

Our atheism family tradition is traced to a - I don't know if it was great-great or a great-great-great grandmother who was a poor Irish-American woman in the 1880s in western Montana. — Barbara Ehrenreich

My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead. — John C. Hawkes

More of a QUESTION: When I was in high school in the 1980's I read a book but cannot remember the name. It had a spooky green cover with a german shepherd like dog on it and I seem to remember it being about ghosts or something in the English countryside -although it could have been Irish or Wales or Scottish. Does anyone else remember this book and can you tell me the name? I would love to reread it since it set me on my path to my LOVE if reading. — M.D. Robinson

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting. — John Millington Synge

Irish nationalists can never be the assenting parties to the mutilation of the Irish nation. The two nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy. — John Redmond

The whole island is spotted with derelict cottages and abandoned churches like this one. They sit in pastures as invisible to the Irish as a mother is to a teenage girl. — Skyler White

The Irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea — Rudyard Kipling

McGahern still lives on and works a farm in Leitrim, and friends say that even though he has held high profile academic posts round the world as a visiting professor he remains essentially a countryman.

Last term he taught in an upstate New York college, but seeing him in the soulless urban grid of downtown Syracuse wearing an old tweed flat cap and long black overcoat, he could have been in an Irish agricultural town on market day as he casually engaged strangers on the street to ask for advice on finding a decent restaurant. Friends say he has extraordinary confidence in who he is and where he's from - he behaves pretty much the same way wherever is and whoever he is with. — John McGahern

Author relates the reaction of an Irish village to a landowner who tried to raise rents on the land's occupants. The villagers refused to talk to or trade with the man, whose name was Captain Boycott. — Patrick N. Allitt

My mom's Jewish and my dad's Irish Catholic alcoholic, so I whine on the inside. — Margaret Smith

In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?' — Binyavanga Wainaina

I don't have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn't very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge 'cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago. — Benny Goodman

Thady begins his memoirs of the Rackrent Family by dating MONDAY MORNING, because no great undertaking can be auspiciously commenced in Ireland on any morning but MONDAY MORNING. 'Oh, please God we live till Monday morning, we'll set the slater to mend the roof of the house. On Monday morning we'll fall to, and cut the turf. On Monday morning we'll see and begin mowing. On Monday morning, please your honour, we'll begin and dig the potatoes,' etc.
All the intermediate days, between the making of such speeches and the ensuing Monday, are wasted: and when Monday morning comes, it is ten to one that the business is deferred to THE NEXT Monday morning. The Editor knew a gentleman, who, to counteract this prejudice, made his workmen and labourers begin all new pieces of work upon a Saturday. — Maria Edgeworth

Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen-the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will-are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them. — Fanny Kemble

You're a good Irishman, right?" When Butch nodded, V said, "Irish, Irish ... let me think. Yeah ... " Vishous's eyes sobered, and in a voice that cracked, he said, "May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And ... my dearest friend ... until we meet again may the Lord hold you in the palm of His hand. — J.R. Ward

My parents spent an awful lot of money sending me to the best possible schools, and I came out of my exams and thought, 'I don't really want to do a degree.' I did philosophy with the Jesuits for about a year, and then I joined a bank. While I was there, I saw an ad in an Irish paper for radio announcers. — Terry Wogan

Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin-that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns. — Margaret Mitchell

I thought the butler always did it," someone remarked under their breath. — Carlene O'Connor

It's so tough to get movies made in Ireland anymore. A whole generation of Irish filmmakers doesn't have the resources to get a movie made. — Ciaran Hinds

Irish demographics reveal two startling facts: There are around 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish descent, and Ireland today has barely half the population that it had 160 years ago, a decline unmatched in the modern world. These facts are explained and connected by the undeniable social reality of nineteenth-century Ireland - emigration. — Ryan Hackney

The three things Aristotle couldn't understand: the work of the bees, the coming and going of the tide, and the mind of a woman. - Irish Triad — Dorien Kelly

As the seasons age us
I close my eyes and wish for snow
Alas the Irish seasons been foretold
For Spring will dawn and I will go
Into another season Jack Frost cold.
And when its here, I wish for night
As childhood memories flash right by
To see the birds in humble flight
I wish for Summer with a sigh
And on I go to months so sweet
Dawns sweet chorus and sunbeams bright
I yearn for Autumn leaves under feet
Yet now I dream of Winters night
As Auld Lang Syne rings in New Year
Alas! I'm one year older as Spring draws near. — Michelle Geaney

In Chicago, you can't swing a cat without hitting an Irish pub (and angering the cat), but McAnally's place stands out from the crowd. — Jim Butcher

Finally, Colin Farrell showed up on my doorstep, only he wasn't Colin Farrell - he was just this Irish kid who had read the script and wanted to do it. — Robert Towne

They were empowered and fulfilled. They dated occasionally but were just as happy living the feminist dream of a professional woman not answerable to any man. Do what they wanted to, go where they wanted to and spend indecent amount of money on clothes and shoes, it was all good. There were not slaves to diets, shaving hairy legs, waxing eyebrows, dying their roots, endless showers, applying tons of make-up and trying to be domestic goddesses. They could slum around in leisure suits and runners reading Cosmo with a fag in their mouth and a cup of coffee in their hands. There could be slummy mummies or tidy queens or takeaway junkies it all depended on their daily rota and social live. Good, freedom was definitely good. One husband in a lifetime was enough for them — Annette J. Dunlea

What's fascinating is where they come from in the world. People in Bangladesh, a chap in a fire-base in Tikrit in Iraq. Chap in an Irish pub in Dublin. And lovely to think this literary network - or rather network of readers - is well spread out. — John Gimlette

When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up. — Colm Toibin

Towns like Launceston, Longford, Evandale and other current-day hubs of poppy production in north and central Tasmania had been settled by tens of thousands of British and Irish convicts transported here in the early 19th century as a cheap alternative to prisons in the British Isles. They were followed by thousands of so-called free settlers, who built communities with main streets still lined by two- and three-story pink sandstone buildings. — Anonymous

I believe that the interior life is the same for all of us. And because they're steeped in faith, Irish-American Catholics are a people who have a language for the examined life. — Alice McDermott

It's almost like that's the definition of being American: You love becoming Irish for a day, or becoming Italian ... Or becoming a Negro for four years. — Josh Alan Friedman

She'd made life poignant for the Irish. The terror she inspired gave peace its serenity; the pain she caused gave health its lustre; her failure to love made me grateful for my ability to do so, and I realized, far too late, that though I never did or could have loved her as she might have wished, I should have loved her more. — Kevin Hearne

They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon. — Bobby Sands

In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better. — C.E. Murphy

At Leeds I've tried to concentrate on my club form, but you get caught up in all the World Cup fever once you come back to Ireland and see all the Irish boys again. — Robbie Keane

Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us - grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. * * * P — Susan Sontag

For a man to come right out and say he does not believe in the Old Testament, I think many Catholics across the nation as well as the world are offended by Bill O'Reilly claiming he's an Irish Catholic. — Stephen Bennett

I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system. — Mary Robinson

I was freelancing for years in Cork and around. I also wrote freelance pieces for 'The Irish Times.' — Kevin Barry

This is the ultimate narcissistic white-girl game. I would picture how I would handle the attack differently. Or the same. Inevitably, I'd think about my own death, which next to staring at your face in a magnifying mirror is probably the worst thing you can do for yourself. The ambulance-chasing aspect combined with the Monday-morning quarterbacking of it all is the luxury afforded to those of us left untouched by trauma. Sometimes I would use these tragedy-porn shows to unlock deep feelings or cut through the numbness. I would read terrible stories to punish myself for my lucky life. Some real deep Irish Catholic shit. Either way, it was all gross and all bad for my health. — Amy Poehler

Scurvy became a problem. This disease comes from a deficiency of vitamin C, and it causes the victim's connective tissue to break down. The Irish called scurvy black leg, because it made the blood vessels under the skin burst, giving a victim's limbs a black appearance. The cure for scurvy is fresh food - meat, vegetables, or fruit - none of which was available to the poor in Ireland. There — Ryan Hackney

I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish music, but stayed away from the old country till I was over 40. I just couldn't own being Irish. — John Patrick Shanley

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could. — George Bernard Shaw

We're a superstitious breed, we Irish, and wise enough to build around a faerie hill without disturbing it, to leave a stone dance where it stands. And to keep back from a place where the dark still thrums. — Nora Roberts

Wehehehehell, if it isn't Ollie-Ollie-oxidant-free ... "
You can take ... all the tea in China ... put it in a big brown ... bag for me.
He's as sweet as tupelo honey; he's an angel of the first degree.
Men with insight ... men in granite ... knights in armor bent on ... chivalry.
He's as sweet as ... tupelo honey; just like honey, baby ... from the bee."
=> For those who read and liked "When Irish eyes are sparkling"
Can i have a musician here? — Tom Collins

Music began playing and a woman walked into the room and stood beside a small band. She was dressed in a red Irish costume that hung to her ankles and it was laced at the bodice with a black cord. After giving a nod to the band, she sang a few Irish songs. But one song seemed to stand out to Rick and he stopped eating and listened.
Sure a little bit of Heaven fell from out the sky one day and it nestled on the ocean in a spot so far away. When the angels found it, sure it looked so sweet and fair, they said, "Suppose we leave it for it looks so peaceful there."
So they sprinkled it with stardust just to make the shamrocks grow. 'Tis the only place you'll find them no matter where you go. Then they dotted it with silver to make its lakes so grand and when they had it finished, sure they called it Ireland. — Linda Weaver Clarke

It is St. Patrick's Day. And here in Scranton, that is a huge deal. It is the closest that the Irish will ever get to Christmas. — Michael Scott

I don't like medicine. There's an old Irish proverb that goes, "If I knew where I was going to die, I wouldn't go there." I suspect that I'm going to die in a hospital, so every time I go past one, I drive really quickly to get away from those things. So I spend a lot of money on health: gyms, I go to naturopaths, acupuncturists; anybody else who's almost the alternative to medicine. I think by the time you need medicine, it's too late. That's my belief. — Robert Kiyosaki

My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day. — Meg Cabot

On St. Patrick's Day, the traditional Irish family would rise early and find a solitary sprig of shamrock to put on their somber Sunday best. Then they'd spend the morning in church listening to sermons about how thankful they should be that St. Patrick saved such a bunch of ungrateful sinners. Nobody wore green clothing as it was considered an unlucky color not suitable for church. — Rashers Tierney

My mother came from an Irish family of 11 kids and, of course, had a sister who was a nun, so I spent time at a convent and with an aunt and uncle who lived in New York and took me to the theater. — Ellen Pompeo

Irish fathers still have certain responsibilities, and by the time my two daughters turned seven, they could swim, ride a bike, sing at least one part of a Woody Guthrie song, and recite all of W. B. Yeats's 'The Song of Wandering Aengus.' — Adrian McKinty

President Obama told the Irish people that America will always stand by them, to which Israel laughed. — Jay Leno

I am a war man in the day of war, but I am a peace man in the day of peace. — Michael Collins

Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse. — John Boyle O'Reilly

The Irish Republic must be made a word to conjure with - a rallying point for the disaffected, a haven for the oppressed, a point of departure for the socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom. — James Connolly

Let justice be done tho the heavens fall. — Michael Davitt

But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term "Whig" had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called "Tories." Neither — Winston S. Churchill

I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full. — Lord Dunsany

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be. — Kenneth Branagh