The revelation of the naked body, the thrill of performing, the excitement of working on the edge. Artists, writers and performers revealed the inner secrets of their art to Irish Timeswriters throughout the year. Here are some of their most entertaining quotes of 2006
"It's not spectacular. It's intimate. And each note is like a diamond. It's easier to play millions of notes by Rachmaninov than five or six notes in one bar of music by Mozart. " - pianist Philippe Cassard
"When you are connecting with the audience, I wouldn't swap it for anything. There is the risk factor, but it's also full of wonderful possibilities. We're talking about the fear now, but there's the other side, too, which is the relish of communicating and enacting something for an audience. It's thrilling."' - actor Ralph Fiennes
"It's all part of the work. You do it if you have to, if it helps to tell the story, and if you can't, you don't. They are really obsessed with it in America and how many pounds you gained or lost. I wouldn't want to be an actress, that's for sure." - actor Daniel Day-Lewis
"In 50-odd years time, [ when Samuel Beckett's copyright lapses] the field is open. It will be very interesting. I'd love to be around and see how the work survives. If it does survive." - Samuel's nephew Edward Beckett
"I wanted to work with those boys (producers Andy and Larry Wachowski) because they're so eccentric and peculiar. Larry, of course, is halfway towards being a woman now. It's a crazy world." - actor John Hurt
"The people in charge have no connection with the patients, and nobody takes any responsibility. They are putting a business template on to a caring profession, and that cannot be done successfully. I feel like asking John O'Shea to come to Ireland and sort out our A&E system." - actor Brendan Gleeson
"A lot of Hollywood children suffer from having famous parents, but it was different for us in Galway. It felt more like being the son of the master of the Galway Blazers, who just happened to make films. [ John] was a larger than life character and a true gentleman, and later a buddy to me." - actor/director Danny Huston
"The only thing I didn't feel comfortable with was because of my Arab face. Because of that you always have an image of an immigrant and I don't like this." - Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem on living in France
"I think we're very lucky that there are two of us and we've always got another opinion. We talk about everything and carefully consider every decision. I sometimes feel sorry for people who are doing this on their own." - actor/TV presenter Declan Donnelly of Ant and Dec
"While people were drowning in New Orleans, she was buying shoes on Madison Avenue, and then she went to Spamalot, the Monty Python show on Broadway. Her ass - excuse me - Miss Rice should have been down there in New Orleans and not on Broadway that weekend."- director Spike Lee on US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice
"We always have to hope that if people listen to one another's music, it might help them to overcome some of the ignorance they have of one another and of one another's humanity." - ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger
"Up to the age of 14 I had not heard a note of anything before 1750, never heard a note of Bach, never heard anything after Wagner, and never heard any real jazz." - composer Steve Reich
"I would find it too deeply scary to know how every single thing must, must, must be, and to try and follow that. I think it would come out sounding unnatural." - Irish Chamber Orchestra artistic director Anthony Marwood
"I could knock out loads of what I term aromatherapy music pretty swiftly. If you want something that is going to last, however, you're going to have to spend a lot more time on it." - composer William Orbit
"There's no point in me trying to convince people. I've never tried to prove anything to anybody - not even myself. I just like to write, and that's about it. And really it's only in this country because everywhere else, the fact that [the Taoiseach] is my dad doesn't really count for much, you know? Everywhere else, it's just another book on a bookshelf." - Cecelia Ahern on her father, the Taoiseach
"I believe that it is possible to gather people together and live an experience together. This is something I have tried to do in all the performances I've made." - choreographer Alain Platel
"I've never had much attachment to places. My home was finding, finally, that I really wanted to be a writer. It's really important for me to live in my head. I'm very happy doing that and feeling like a foreigner." - playwright Enda Walsh
"For an actor to remain a child is rather important. It's a childlike, dreamy thing, acting, if you think about it. It's the sort of thing children fantasise about, playing cowboys and Indians in the street. I think that acting is just a highly refined development of that." - actor Michael Gambon
"Classical performance style just hasn't evolved; and lots of people don't feel classical music is relevant to their lives. That's how they feel. Which is a shame because classical music is full of drama, excitement - eroticism, even." - pianist Cassie Yukawa
"Brendan [ my late brother] had been in a drink unit. He insisted that if I was going to write a play about one of these places, it should be funny." - playwright Damian Gorman
"We're just blades of grass, and when we go, we go, we never come back; one life . . . maybe that's true. But I tend to believe that this is not all there is. Because my life has been like a shadow of something deeper. And I've experienced that many times." - actor Anthony Hopkins
"It can't just be flukey. I must be doing something right." - actor Conleth Hill on winning his second Olivier Award
"In America now every romantic comedy is interpreted politically. I can remember when I was promoting Black Hawk Down we were all being asked what it said about September 11th. Well, it was shot before that happened, so, nothing." - actor Eric Bana
"You do sometimes find yourself on the bus and people are talking about you, saying 'She's in this' and 'She's in that', and I want to say: 'She's not deaf, you know'." - actor Pauline McLynn
"I think if you were known for playing something other than being a nice guy then people might be a little less likely to take liberties with you. If you are Ray Winstone, and people have seen you kick a few people to death, then they are a little less likely to approach you or whatever." - actor Martin Freeman
"The naked body hides every bit as much as it reveals. Audiences notice we're naked, and then forget it." - dancer Boris Charmatz
"One time, I confided in Denis Murphy that I was thinking of getting a banjo and he said to me: 'Lord God, Maurice, hould on to your fiddle' - so I did!" - trad musician Maurice O'Keeffe
"Life is terminal. Some people just have better luck than others that God hasn't called them yet. What you wanna look at is nobody's gonna make it out of here alive." - jazz pianist Andrew Hill on his cancer
"Yes, it's possible to teach someone to sing in a sean-nós style. It's almost a photocopying exercise, and is commonplace. What's more difficult to imagine is that you'll hear an original voice emerging." - singer Iarla Ó Lionáird
"He's famous as the blind tenor. That's horrible, but it's true. His voice is not in any way exceptional. It's not terrible, either. When they put the microphone down his tonsils he makes a reasonable go of it. But if he wasn't blind, he just wouldn't stand out from the crowd." - John Allison, editor of Opera magazine, on Andrea Bocelli
"There's a lot of talk about purists in traditional music, but these musicians all played quite a bizarre piece of music (Roaratorio) for [ John] Cage, and they were so open-minded. That's what makes great musicians great, if you ask me." - David Flynn on the playing of Seamus Ennis, Paddy Glackin and Matt Molloy
"It needs to be full of lively people and get a few dents and kicks." - David King, director of the new DanceHouse in Dublin
"Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form." - jazz pianist McCoy Tyner
"We were singing it in St Patrick's Cathedral with the banners of Irish first World War regiments hanging there. You're singing about the futility of war, and then you look up at the banners and realise how many of our guys didn't come back." - Brian McIvor on singing with the RTÉ Philharmonic Orchestra
"This is extraordinary. I hope Ireland feels it's their film. It is their film." - director Ken Loach, after accepting the Palme d'Or at Cannes for The Wind that Shakes the Barley
"I have multiple identities. I'm British. I'm Pakistani. I'm a Muslim. I'm a writer. I'm a father. And each identity has rich overtones. So I must be careful to look at your identity, and that of others, in the same way." - writer Ziauddin Sardar
"For every tune that I learn, I think that I forget another one, because there's only so much room in the micro chip upstairs." - accordion player Seamus Begley
"I remember Judy Garland being at my dad's 40th birthday party. She happened to have broken her arm and had a pink cast on it - and because it wasn't completely dry, some pink plaster of Paris remained on one of our black leather chairs." - Rosemary Riddle, daughter of arranger Nelson
"Approaching any movie with a three in the title you know you are not going to get a political polemic. You are not going to get some sort of political statement or ultra-deep message." - Mission: Impossible III director J J Abrams
"You will find that women who are pregnant often don't want to be and women who aren't desperately envy those who are. Labour wards are always full of very punitive people." - writer Fay Weldon
"A lot of contemporary written music they try to present as new things, but then you listen to something by Ligeti in the 1960s and you find that that was much more modern than the new one." - jazz pianist Stefano Bollani
"We, who have the luxury of not being in that plane on 9/11, have broader choices to make. We should work hard to find the right solutions for our own aeroplane, for our world today, and hopefully we will all get through this." - United 93 director Paul Greengrass
"We will be looking . . . to programme things that people want to see and return the festival to its status as a prestige, international event." - Belfast Festival artistic director Graeme Farrow
"I have toyed with the idea of playing it straight. But, like I say, I really believe we are all out of our minds at some level." - actor Johnny Depp
"I know that reporting this stuff is just a job. It really is not personal. Actually, I have a laugh about it. I am curious to see what I am, apparently, doing next. It's like this soap opera starring myself." - actor Vince Vaughn
"It's all got a lot more real recently. It was like I tried this new suit on six years ago and then the suit was crisp and starched. Now it's more relaxed. It fits better on me." - actor Colin Farrell
"Now, I am like her translator. When we are out in LA ordering coffee or buying clothes and the sales lady can't understand what she is saying I have to translate. We laugh about that." - actor Jesse Metcalfe, star of Desperate Housewives and boyfriend of singer Nadine Coyle
"When I was young I thought: when I am 60 my necessities will be very different. As I get near that age, I realise they are similar to what they were when I was 25." - Pedro Almodóvar, director of Volver
"I am sent too many mainstream scripts in which the older woman is really quite grotesque. Sometimes you read a script and you feel quite sick that they have to caricature older women in such a negative way." - actor Sigourney Weaver
"In an increasingly diverse country, conflict is everywhere. But what is conflict? That's the most important ingredient of theatre. So let's put it on stage." - actor/director Bisi Adigun
"I think it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention." - Peter Carey
"I wanted to see who this Yeats person was, and I said to my mother, 'I want a book by this person.' And she bought it for me, and a lot of it was over my head, but I had it." - musician Patti Smith
"I thought they'd say: 'You know, the sooner you get on an Aer Lingus flight and go home, the better.' But they didn't." - Joe Dowling, artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis
"There is nothing wrong with knowing your limitations. There is nothing wrong with knowing your station in life. It is amazing that I am where I am today, that I have some sort of reputation in the history of indie cinema. That's enough." - Kevin Smith, director of Clerks II
"A good song might lie down - but it'll never die." - trad singer Luke Cheevers
"The window of HMV is perhaps a more significant cultural site now than the entrance of the National Library or the National Concert Hall, and as a result, it's much more carefully guarded and much harder to access." - musician Louis De Paor
"I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years." - novelist Richard Ford
"I see Leonard the revered author/singer/ poet in other people's eyes, but to me he's just the chap in the other room who makes my breakfast. I sew the buttons on his shirt, y'know - it's just a normal relationship." - Anjani, partner of Leonard Cohen
"We can get an idea from head to stage in, say, three months." - German choreographer Irina Pauls
"I am currently observing celebrity culture in its native habitat and I will be documenting on it in my upcoming book, Origin of the Sub Species." - singer Ana Matronic, Scissor Sisters
"I rushed to the FXH ready to face any Beethoven Symphony, any Brahms, any piece of the classical repertoire you could care to name. I opened the folder on the music stand in front of me - and found the theme song from The Magnificent Seven." - flautist William Dowdall on his first day at work with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra
"I would anticipate that because of the attractiveness of Dublin, because of its vibrancy and, I suppose, because of its youth, it's going to be a very exciting place to live in the future. What we're seeking to do is pre-empt that growth by increasing the number of cultural centres which are available in the city." - Minister for Arts, John O'Donoghue
"That's a Pandora's Box. EB White said that analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies." - jazz pianist Bill Carrothers on dissecting music - or any art - too much
"Creativity is an odd word. I'm not 100 per cent sure what it means. It's bandied about as a term that covers loads of things, but doesn't really describe what actually happens. A lot of the time 'creativity' is about continuing with an idea you actually have and seeing it through to the end - to have that belief, almost. I think belief is a better word than creativity." - visual artist Bea McMahon
"I'll bet that guys like Gerry Adams and Alex Maskey have British army connections in their families and they have to face up to that." - playwright Martin Lynch
"It's very easy to just shout: 'Off with their heads!' Maybe in doing that you might lose something very valuable. I would like to see the monarchy continue, but in a more democratic fashion." - actor Helen Mirren, star of The Queen
"We do have our own composers. Okay, they're not Mozarts or Beethovens - but they're there, and they're ours. And we really should know about them, and play their music more, I think." - pianist Una Hunt
"But I would reinvent myself if I could. As a sexy leading man! We all would like that, but I don't know how to." - actor Dustin Hoffman
"People ask me if I believe in things: in God, in astrology, and I say, absolutely! I believe in everything! And I believe in its opposite. Like the positive and negative volts on a battery, you need both for power." - playwright John Patrick Shanley
"It is like a weird dream. You get the Oscar, take it backstage and there are these endless corridors of curtains with somebody on every corner saying 'this way'. It is like something from a David Lynch film." - Andrea Arnold, director of Red Road and an Oscar winner for her short Wasp
"I fear that I am on the verge of losing my objectivity about George Bush. I don't think that he is unintelligent. I think he is very intelligent. But I think that he is incurious and that puzzles me." - former US vice president Al Gore
"The real conspiracy is Bush and his cadre taking us into Iraq in broad daylight. That is a fascinating conspiracy and much more interesting than the imagined ones." - Oliver Stone, director of World Trade Center
"I think there's no harm, sometimes, to feel on the edge of things. If you're on the margins you can see a bigger picture. And I actually quite like standing at a peculiar angle to the universe." - playwright Dermot Bolger
"This is a director's medium. Stage may be an actor's medium, but this is about the director. Any actor should be prepared to prostrate himself at the director's feet." - Todd Field, director of Little Children
"It would be unforgivable to use the role I have, such as it is, to inflict my incoherent, half-baked view of the world on people. That would be illegitimate and unacceptable and I should be fired." - broadcaster Jeremy Paxman
"The Irish seem to want their artists to function as surrogate priests - sources of authority, founts of wisdom, people who will offer us free-range organic consolation, you name it. It's not a position I feel comfortable with." - playwright Alex Johnston
"The greatest gift an actor can have is not revealing who he is but through the parts he plays. Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone wants to know everything all the time and I think it takes away part of the fun of acting that we have to go through that all the time." - actor Jude Law
"One of the things that drives me a little nuts is reading people telling their Hollywood war stories. It's not as if you don't know what you're getting into when you go there." - director Nicholas Hytner
"It's just odd that something as essential in life as sex has been flattened out in mainstream cinema - and in art cinema. Even in art movies, sex always seems to be treated negatively. Why does it always end in disaster?" - director John Cameron Mitchell
