Dylan Moran Quotes

I'm just trying to understand what's around me as much as anyone else is, really. To draw a bead on a moving target.

Money can't buy you love, but it can get you some really good chocolate ginger biscuits.

I quite fancy the 1940s. I like the trams and the trousers.

If you covered a broom handle with oil and shoved it up my arse, then put me on a trampoline, in a lift, I could write a better song on the walls.

I don't know that you're able to measure your aggregate wisdom as you go through life. I can't say that I ever feel that I'm sitting on top of a growing mound of wisdom.

Idioms are a big thing in Ireland. They want to fill the time, to show how good they are at talk - it's a talk-off

Now I'm not an expert at mathematics, but I calculated it would take at least three of me to take on one third of one of them, even if they were attacking me with just their arse.

You look like a horse in a man costume

Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!

I draw hundreds and hundreds of pictures of sort of gnarly looking men, so I don't know what that tells you. People who look like ... they're waiting for a sandwich that's never going to come. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Kids, they are always hurting themselves. It's like, "Quick, get me to casualty quick!" while your doing something important like sitting down picking your ear.

Look at his face. I bet his cornflakes try to crawl out of the bowl.

I did throw a lot of eggs into one basket, as you do in your teenage years - 'I am buying these records, I am wearing this'. I did quite a bit of that. You have to do it, wear your stupid shoes, wear your stupid hair.

I think a lot of the time you just parody yourself.

Irish people give big hellos and very little goodbyes. Unless they're female, and then they spend five hours talking in the doorway to the person that's leaving their house.

You learn very very quickly that it is mostly about swearing, actually. That's all you're doing, swearing, in a box with wheels.

As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.

I can't get involved in all the murders you need to commit to get this shit out of your system.

You can see desperation in people who are too eager to laugh because they're in such a hurry not to look at what's confronting them in their lives and that's kind of sad because there's a kind of pornographic aspect to it, of making some sort of pain go away, of hovering around a pain, making yourself numb, not feel anything.

It should not be an act of social disobedience to light a cigarette. Unless you're actually a doctor working at an incubator.

I can't swim. I can't drive, either. I was going to learn to drive but then I thought, well, what if I crash into a lake?

And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying.

You're never going to go. Why would you go? It's a disgusting place. It's always wet even when it's dry. There's nothing there. Farmers aren't really people, you know this. They're just necessary, we need somebody to kill cows.

Your mind is a hive of worms. And worms don't live in a hive, so it already feels unnatural.

I do not walk around imaging myself to be intimidating or smart.

The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

Lots of comics try stuff out all year round, which is very sensible - I don't.

I think that women just have a primeval instinct to make soup, which they will try to foist on anybody who looks like a likely candidate.

Vodka is a very deceptive drink. You can't taste it, you can't smell it.

And yet, people still turn to Jesus. You will notice though that the kind of people who turn to Jesus tend to be the sort of people who haven't done that well with everybody else.

All the shy people are doomed! Natural selection favors the loud and the aggressive

You can't please everyone, nor should you seek to, because then you won't please anyone, least of all yourself.

People will kill you. Over time. They will shave out every last morsel of fun in you with little, harmless sounding phrases that people uses every day, like: 'Be realistic!'
[What It Is (2009)]

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

I never thought I want to do anything, really, except not go to work properly and turn up at the same place every day and eat sandwiches in the same canteen, if I can possibly help it, as I don't think I'd be very good at it.

Tequila? It's not even a drink. It's a way for having the cops around without using a phone.

Don't do it! Stay away from your potential. You'll mess it up, it's potential, leave it. Anyway, it's like your bank balance - you always have a lot less than you think.

Men look at breasts the way women look at babies. 'Aw, isn't that lovely.'

You exaggerate your own reactions.

I feel very very old. My hair hurts. I have buttocks all over my body and I can't even smoke properly any more. I don't have lungs, I just have two poppadoms in here.

Because their bones are growing, they can only sleep in certain positions, obviously. The crucifix and the swastika tend to be the most popular. Sometimes a combination of the two.

What I prefer is an audience who listen. And are intelligent. Which I try and assume every audience is. And that if something goes wrong, it's generally my fault and not theirs.

I've been writing since I was very young, even before I was a teenager. As far as I'm concerned, I am a writer - whether my writing's spoken or written in a blog, paper, book or printed on the side of a submarine.

I don't really think of myself as an actor.

Yeah, I think Michael has had to deal with that label of being Michael Caine for a long time.

One thing that's coming up a lot is: are you as grumpy as you appear from this Black Books thing.

Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There's nothing worse to look at in the world.

Vodka! That's a child's drink, why am I drinking this stupid drink, oh and why am I on a traffic island?

You're not going to learn anything if you're not prepared to go flat, so I'm very happy to go flat.

Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing.

When you say 'Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime!' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Lie down in the dark ... for hours ... and don't move ... I'm locking the door now.'

Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical.

It probably says something really clinically terrible about my character that I need to get up on a stage and go 'Ra ra ra' in front of people.

Love in all its forms is very difficult ... to express. It changes, obviously. If you're young, and you're romantically in love with somebody, and often if you've just met somebody, its crazy! It's completely overwhelming. You can't think of anything else. You just want to climb inside the other person and live under their pancreas. And then it mellows, somewhat ... to the point where you can barely look at them ... without feeling a mild distaste

We are both drawn to surreal situations so the writing was a joy.

A man does not know how he came by the half a pie he is holding in his hand!

It's easy to smile when you have a squirrel's intellect.

I thought The Office was good, though I didn't think of it as a sitcom, just as a very good programme.

I think you should, yeah. You should wash your beard, then shave it off, nail it to a Frisbee and fling it over a rainbow.

Now, I meant to talk about something else earlier on, and I've forgotten what it was. I've remembered what it is again, but I've also forgotten. And that's really what adult life is like most of the time.

You know, just sometimes in between the first cigarette with coffee in the morning to that 400th glass of cornershop piss at 3am
you do sometimes look at yourself and think
this is fantastic. I'm in heaven.

If I hadn't done this I might have ended up digging the roads.

I'm delighted to make as many people feel ashamed as possible. There's probably a site like that for everybody. I've heard Newt Gingrich has his own as well.

I can't relax here. These people have no pubic hair anywhere. We have pubic hair on the ceiling.

I'm organised in some ways, but not in others.

I'm very drawn to Eastern Europe, so I like a Hungarian writer who wrote in French called Emil Cioran; he was always good for giving me such a stir.

You see the button with the guy with the tray, and you push it, AND HE ARRIVES WITH A SANDWICH! ... And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land"

It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book.

I'm a vegetarian, well I'm not hardcore because I eat meat, but only because I like the taste, and I hate vegetables on a personal level so I'm not too good!

You've a very important, early decision to make in your life: are you going to be alone, or are you going to be with somebody else? Are you going to be sane, or not lonely? A couple is a strange thing; it's an organism that's half as intelligent as the most intelligent member. And you both know who it is.

I'm not drunk onstage, although I've done that a couple of times when I was younger. It's partly just the way I talk - I talk like somebody in a rocking chair. I'm your 150-year-old grandmother.

My drive to put myself on the line comes from boredom. From that feeling when you go to bed and think, 'What did I do today?' It doesn't have to be something monumental, just a feeling that you really tried to look at something, or look into something.

I really can't describe what my stand-up is like - people see it and they say it's like that, or it's like this, and that's really up to them, that's fine, but I don't sit around all day analysing it. I just try and enjoy a show and interest myself because if I don't do that then I won't interest anybody else.

Beer must be made by food companies. It makes you wander the streets at 3 am looking for things to eat. "What's that, is it moving, get it!! It's a nun! FRY HER!! FRY HER!"

What's the weather like? ... It's fierce mild!

Everybody is corrupted by hotel rooms. You can't help it. It's the only place in the world where you walk in and the first think you do is steal everything before you take your coat off.

What is universal can be surprising. Over time you find the kind of stuff which has people thinking 'That is just something that occurred to me ... there's something wrong with me', is in fact stuff that is universal.

I don't go around thinking of myself as a great anything.

I was very into New Order, Joy Division, all of that when I was younger. I had a lot of bootlegs that I saved up my pocket money to buy. I had all the obscure early EPs.

Why do I even dare to think I could dream I could imagine I could hope?

I suppose the best comedy shows do have the rock n' roll feeling - if it's a great night, and the roof is raised ... yeah, it's a similar feeling, sure.

I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust; key stuff - a perilous loss.

I do think it's perfectly natural and human to want to invest belief in something. It's just a facet of who we are. What do I believe in? I believe in the obvious things. The people I'm close to and my work - it's not complicated.

There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There's the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that's ok, can we get 8 of those please, give us 8 of those." There's the other one, you know, where you go "Ga ... bt ... jesus, WHAT is that?" Very, very occasionally I concede you will hit a subtle one. You know, where you go "Ga ... ba ... ah, actually that's not that bad, that is. It's quite nice."

Oh how I hate you. I hate you so much it gives me energy. I have to get up early in the morning just to hate you, because there's not enough time in the day! Please GO AWAY!

When did you ever hear of a child not in need? 'Oh that's enough jam tart for me, I'll just go now and clean the toilets.'

You're not really an adult at all. You're just a tall child holding a beer, having a conversation you don't understand.

I wouldn't be in a huge hurry to go back to Kansas. It was just bizarre. There's a lot of very, very heavy set people who believe in whatever they were told, because they didn't seem to get out very much or be interested in leaving where they were. They just didn't seem that curious, and I find that a little hard to deal with.

I would never really analyse what I do. I leave that to other people - I'm not a critic. I just want to get on with whatever I have in hand, you know? Just try to make the best job of the available material.

I don't have lungs anymore! Just two spare bags that flew in under a bridge one day.

The East is very mysterious to Westerners. Even post-Cold War, it's still an unknown entity.

You know it's a sad day when your child looks at you and asks 'Daddy, are these organic?'

I don't want to do panel games or adverts. I really like challenges. I always get roles as an art teacher or a photographer. In the future I want to play something like a mugger/assassin/pastry chef.

You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You'll mess it up! It's potential, leave it! And anyway, it's like your bank balance, you know – you always have much less than you think. Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… "Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…" But it won't be like that. You don't want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.

I've always been a big consumer of American journalism over the years and had an interest in the history of it and of the press in America; how it has changed.

You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!

Stand-up came naturally to me because people in Ireland talk. But that's not talking on panel shows; it is structured fun. It reminds me of some tragic aunt clapping her hands and bouncing into a room and announcing we should all play games ... and if we don't we are all a rotten spoilsport.

America's work ethic is non-stop; it's not even enshrined in law that workers have to get their two weeks holiday money. But Americans work harder than everyone else I can think of.