I grew up in a big Irish, Catholic family. My dad was a pretty rough guy. So one of my brothers left home when he was 15 and found his way to the gym. It gave me the opportunity to go and spend some time with him and work out in the gym.
I saw my mother crying for the first time, which made a huge impression on me, when I came home from kindergarten, and she was watching TV because JFK - that Irish Catholic president that we loved - had been killed.
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart.
I think it's best for me to kind of just plough on doing whatever interests me, just following my own whims, because otherwise, I would think, 'Oh well, I have to write something now that really represents my generation or that really represents young Irish people.'
The presidency is an independent office and the Irish people whom I appreciate so much and I take with such responsibility have given a very clear mandate on a very clear set of ideas to me, as the ninth president.
To me, the real opinion polls are the tangible facts: the growing creation of jobs, the number of planning permissions, the number of commercial vans being sold - the signs that the Irish people are regaining confidence.
For me, a story begins with music: I feel the rhythm, the cadence, the pulse of the characters and their voices and the setting. Because I had just finished writing a book called 'Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine,' I was already filled with the music of the lives and culture of the Irish people, so I thought, why not use it?
To be a young Irishman in London and go to the theater to see 'Rosemary's Baby'... it scared the crap out of me.
Show me an Irishman who can't tell a story - I don't think they exist.
My father was a gruff Irishman who was unable to express feelings and always insisted we be tough. Being a parent, for me, means creating what I didn't have. I want my children to feel love and be able to express it.
After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my husband!
If I get too old to write, or short-term memory loss - that was the one Philip Roth was worried about - if I got to that point, that would be terrible, because everything about my life has been streaming toward writing and having something to say. That would make me feel as though I were in an iron maiden of some kind.
Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.
I never really saw my dad around when the Iron Maiden and the AC/DC were playing. But he knew what I was doing. I was just absorbing music. So he just kind of left me to my own devices.
There's a nostalgic aspect to the 'Iron Man' franchise for me.
I believe that Bitcoin is going to change the way that everything works. I want entrepreneurs to tell me how its going to change. Build the equivalent of an Iron Man suit with Bitcoin.
MAC gave me 55 lipsticks to test. These are the same lipsticks I got caught stealing by the police when I was 15. How ironic.
I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric.
Ironically, being a coach on 'The Voice' and spending time with those kids, Xenia and Dia especially, I learned a lot about myself. It reminded me how lucky I am that this happened for me, and it kind of lit the spark inside me again for my love of music.
