The reason why I have survived as long as I have survived is what my friends, comrades and supporters thought was an extraordinarily cautious approach.

You know, many people have called me, friends from the nationalist camp, revisionists and so on, from around the world, have called me over the years - and now again because of what happened - and they are all very cynical about the police and the authorities.

As soon as you get a certain amount of attention, then everybody kinda wants to start taking pot shots at you. All your old friends that supported you don't support you any more.

We can and must turn this page if we are friends and are prepared to look one another in the eye.

And George Brett. I think most people know that George and I have become pretty good friends over the years.

When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, I hate these people with the pins in their ears. I said, Thank God, something got their attention.

In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that does not displease us.

There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first; when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.

There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends.

And say my glory was I had such friends.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.

It just doesn't mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends.

I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.