Famous Dublin Quotes

Terry didn’t really do deference around famous people. I was once in a position, in Dublin, to introduce him to Bono from U2, explaining, as I did so, that Bono owned the hotel we were standing in. ‘Ah, good,’ Terry said to Bono. ‘Can you get me a milkshake?’ Which he did.

You start admiring someone who's famous for actually doing something---imagine that---and I swear to you I will buy you every item in her entire wardrobe. But over my own dead body will I spend my own time and money turning you into a clone of some brain-dead waste of skin who thinks the pinnacle of achievement is selling her wedding shots to a magazine.

For him the scholarship is a gigantic material fact, like a vast cruise ship that has sailed into view out of nowhere, and suddenly he can do a postgraduate program for free if he wants to, and live in Dublin for free, and never think about rent again until he finishes college. Suddenly he can spend an afternoon in Vienna looking at Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, and it’s hot outside, and if he wants he can buy himself a cheap cold glass of beer afterward. It’s like something he assumed was just a painted backdrop all his life has revealed itself to be real: foreign cities are real, and famous artworks, and underground railway systems, and remnants of the Berlin Wall. That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.

Are your friends as good as MY friends? I can discern the nod of of assent but doubt it. My own friends are far better, they are famous people and they are all dead. Who, you may ask, are those friends of mine, and why are they dead? It is a fair question. They are dead because, had they lived, they would have died anyway from extreme old age and decrepitude.

Terry didn’t really do deference around famous people. I was once in a position, in Dublin, to introduce him to Bono from U2, explaining, as I did so, that Bono owned the hotel we were standing in. ‘Ah, good,’ Terry said to Bono. ‘Can you get me a milkshake?’ Which he did.