I have a horrible memory and I used to consider that a liability, but I've learned along the way that talking to people is really a beautiful thing.

I also like a great Caesar salad with anchovies, although I don't know why some places say 'with anchovies.' If you're making a proper Caesar salad, it's going to have anchovies.

I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.

I was diagnosed a number of years ago with obsessive-compulsive disorder - which everyone has, to some degree - and I have this really annoying trait where in conversation, I always steer it back to something that happened to me.

We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.

With Irish drama, things are told with humor.

Same job, whether it's comedy or drama. Regardless of the weight of the role, I feel like the job is always kind of the same. Who is this person? What's this guy here, and how is he playing with this thing, and what's he trying to say? And what's the volley with all these other people around him?

Comedy's so subjective, and if someone comes to watch, doesn't get it, doesn't find it funny, then fine.