“Coming from a tiny island, it's very exciting to be at sea in Central Europe in the sense of vast stretches of land all around one. We don't get that in Ireland.”

“Probably even more than the architecture I'd be drawn to landscape. That's my first love, landscape... All kinds of landscape, if it's not cluttered up and vandalised. Yesterday we went out to Blenheim, and I love the flatness and the trees. I like all kinds. And where I'm from, the central valley of Virginia, is not one of the most exciting landscapes in the world, but it's one of the most beautiful. It's very beautiful because it has everything. It has mountains, there are streams, there are fields, beautiful trees. And architecture sits very well in it... And I've always lived in the south of Italy, because it’s more excitable. It's volcanic. The land affects people naturally, that's part of the characteristics, for me, of a people, in a sense.”

“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”

“At birth all of us imagine that we are the universe, and we don't distinguish the boundaries between ourselves and those around us. …in some social situations, there is the sense that we are central, important. …there was a natural projection of those attitudes upon the universe.”

“I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the celtic factor… and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.”

“A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa.”

“The boy was standing alone as though the broken glass all around him were a shining sea and he were an island.”

“Ireland is a land of poets and legends, of dreamers and rebels. All of these have music woven through and around them. Tunes for dancing or for weeping, for battle or for love.”

“Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean,
we can't separate ourselves from one another.
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.”

“At the piping of all hands,
When the judgment-signal's spread—
When the islands and the lands
And the seas give up their dead,
And the South and North shall come;
When the sinner is dismayed,
And the just man is afraid,
Then Heaven be thy aid,
Poor Tom.”