Quotes by Fiona Shaw

• So I just play the character, I play the lines.
• I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born.
• I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it.
• I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.
• The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.
• I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.
• People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.
• Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.
• My mother taught me to read.
• Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while.
• One moment cannot be the most important.
• To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.
• This whole tribal loyalty seems to have gone.
• There's something about the Irish that is remarkable.
• There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.
• There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true.
• There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously.
• Theater dates very quickly.
• The energy released by it is enormous and it becomes quite addictive, the power between the audience and the actor.
• The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.
• I had a ball doing Harry Potter.
• I just think that things should be allowed to run their course, and not turned into a Disney ride.
• Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way.
• A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.
• I certainly had no intention of playing a man.
• I can hardly decide what plays I should be in.
• Every generation is obsessed with the decade before they were born.
• Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy.
• Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.
• Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.