I certainly couldn't have written 'Angela's Ashes' when my mother was alive, because she would have been ashamed.

I once cried because I had no shoes to play soccer, but one day, I met a man who had no feet.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

I don't think there's anything on this planet that more trumpets life that the sunflower. For me that's because of the reason behind its name. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it. And that's such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life.

All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.

Randy [Rhoads] was laid to rest at a place called Mountain View Cemetery, where his grandparents were buried. I made a vow there and then to honour his death every year by sending flowers. Unlike most of my vows, I kept it. But I’ve never been back to his graveside. I’d like to go there again one day, before I finally join him on the other side.