Barney was interested in bringing professional boxing back to Northern Ireland in a big way.

- Barry McGuigan

Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.

- Daniel Day-Lewis

I didn't start traveling abroad until I was 17, but I spent many summers on the beaches of Donegal in Ireland.

- Caitriona Balfe

Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England - Ireland is not a geographical fragment, but a nation.

- Charles Stewart Parnell

My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving.

- Ciaran Hinds

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

- Colm Toibin

In Ireland, it's been like U2 and The Cranberries, which is rock, but you know they're Irish.

- Caroline Corr

I remember my first show was a live TV show in Ireland, and I was just petrified. It was horrific.

- Caroline Corr

We come bulletproof in Ireland. We're reared tough, and we fight.

- Conor McGregor

Ireland and England are like two sisters; I would have them embrace like one brother.

- Boyle Roche

It's just very homey in Ireland. It's very comforting and comfortable. There's lots of fireplaces with fires. It's just really cozy.

- Amy Adams

Men, once enemies, are now jointly governing in Northern Ireland. And although there have been several hitches, by and large it's working well.

- Betty Williams

I have ambitions to set records which will be hard to chase down, like getting more than 100 caps for Ireland.

- Brian O'Driscoll

I'm 100% Celt. In fact, I'm directly related to the progenitor of the high kings of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages.

- Brian Cox

What Ireland needs now above all else is peace.

- Albert Reynolds

Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it's quite fine, so fine that the Irish don't even acknowledge that it exists.

- Alan Parker

Going back to Ireland involves at least six to seven emotional breakdowns for me per day.

- Anjelica Huston

I think there's a down-to-earthness with Midwesterners and with people from the Midlands - which is where my family is from - in Ireland.

- Aidan Quinn

I'm 78, I'm on my pension in Ireland, and all that good stuff.

- Anne McCaffrey

In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from.

- Anne Enright