I do think culture is an argument, and that was part of the way I was brought up. People at a social occasion in Ireland will start shouting and arguing. When the Yeats family lived in Bedford Park, they had to go round to the neighbours to say, 'You might think we are fighting, but this is the way we talk to each other.'

Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.

It's ironic that early on in the war with Afghanistan, the Americans and the British were saying, 'We recognise there must be a Palestinian state,' then they rapidly forgot about it. I think history will show that that kind of amnesia will come back to haunt you.

Is the biographer an artist who can and should exist on equal terms with the dramatist, fiction writer and poet? The short and robust answer is, 'Certainly not.'

Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.

I do readings at the public library. I just did a benefit scene night for my old acting teacher.

I think many people go to business school and learn ways to play it safe, ensuring that they avoid some of the pain that entrepreneurs endure while taking less calculated risks.

In the 114th Congress, I had the privilege of serving on two of the most important Committees in the House of Representatives: the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Education and the Workforce.