Fionnula Flanagan Quotes

“I think Irish women are strong as horses, incredibly loyal and for the most part, funny, witty, bright and optimistic in the face of devastating reality.”

“As the old Ranger adage went "If a person doesn't expect to see someone, odds are he won't.”

“If you're a ghost," he said, "we mean you no disrespect. And if you're not a ghost, tell me who you are-or you soon will be one”

“In an age of specialization people are proud to be able to do one thing well, but if that is all they know about, they are missing out on much else life has to offer.”

“Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.”

“Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.”

“'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.”

“A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel.”

“If you choose to take your compass from power, in the end you find only despair. But if you look around the world you can see and touch - the everyday world that is too easily dismissed as everyday - you see largeness, generosity, hope, change for the better. It's always small, but it's real.”

“There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women.”