Quotes of the Year 2009 - Softcover

They come in all shapes and sizes, drawing together the nation's diverse experiences from world crises to errant wheelie bins, from pompous statements of politics and pragmatics, faith and fallacies, to the evasive margins of daily life and the perennial if unimportant problem of getting enough to eat. `You say to me that there is more to life than hurling. Well if you want to carry on like a fella who is not an intercounty hurler well then there will be more to life than hurling. Lots more. But there won't be hurling. That's the reality of it.' Kilkenny manager Brian Cody. `A lot of issues raised here were always picked out to try and trap me and trick me. I never in public life took a bribe, backhander or anything else ... I did my best in front of this tribunal to tell the truth.' Final statement of Bertie Ahern to the Mahon Tribunal. `There are experts telling you how to make your bed and how to wipe a baby's arse. How did we survive before all these experts came along? I know nothing about anything and I know a tiny bit about fashion-but I know that 90 per cent of people on television who talk about fashion know nothing about it. They wouldn't know a raglan sleeve from a bias binding.' Fashion designer Peter O'Brien. `Like, personally, we find, like, we're scraping the pennies together, because, like, I have a part-time job, but now I only have work the first two weeks of every month. I'm not used to kind of, like, having to cut back, like, so it's kind of annoying.' Student Aisling Fitzpatrick, Cabinteely, Co. Dublin, like.

Bernard Share is a distinguished critic, writer and editor. A former editor of Cara, the Aer Lingus in-flight magazine, he has written many books, including the bestselling The Emergency, a popular account of Irish life during World War II, and the hilarious Inish, a novel originally published in 1966 and re-issued last year: Spike Milligan said on more than one occasion that it was the funniest book he had ever read. He is also author of Slanguage, a dictionary of slang and colloquial English in Ireland, the third edition of which was published in 2008. He has lectured and written for radio in both Ireland and Australia.