Ulysses

To celebrate Bloomsday, we're revisiting some of our favourite comments on James Joyce's Ulysses – selected form a wide variety of interviews from the Hot .

“...the way in which something like the Booker Prize has come to be regarded as an arbiter of good literature is nonsense. The worst thing about the man is that he was totally humourless and that is fatal when it comes to interpreting Joyce, because Joyce is wickedly funny.” And I think Jim would capture that, because he is the quintessential Dubliner.” "Ireland is a country which appreciates its poets and its literature. The fact that I was born on Bloomsday as well I suppose adds to it – though perhaps more importantly, it’s also Stan Laurel’s birthday. Our point is that Joyce should be available to everybody, and if anybody is encouraged to read Ulysses after seeing this play, then that’s a job well done on our behalf. “Back in the twenties and thirties, Irish writing really was dominated by a couple of key worldwide figures who were like Easter Island statues dominating the landscape so sternly. I don’t think I read every single word but I read most of them! “I was imbued with the New Testament and Bible class and Sunday school. but it really wasn't! It went on forever and because I hadn't been breathing properly I took a quick break, went to Tesco and fainted trying to buy a Red Bull." I thought it would be a good idea to do it in a day because essentially it's just the one long unpunctuated sentence... Joyce, oddly enough, was never banned in Ireland. I bought my first copy of Ulysses in Brown & Nolan’s, it was under the counter.