Dylan Moran

Dylan Moran (born November 3, 1971, in Navan, County Meath, Ireland) is an Irish comedian, actor, and writer, best known for his work in Black Books.

Dylan Moran in 2006

Monster (2004)

• It should not be an act of social disobedience to light a cigarette... unless you're actually a doctor working at an incubator.
  • On laws in Ireland prohibiting smoking in buildings where people work.

• I don't bother with drugs myself 'cause I'm at that age now; I don't need to. If I want a rush, I just get out of a chair when I don't expect it. Forget to give yourself a couple of days notice before you tie your shoes. Whoosh! What a rush!
  • On drugs and middle-age.

• But you see, you measure what a good time you had by how much it fucks you up; you go out tonight, get ripped, get shitfaced. You'll wake up tomorrow and somebody will talk to you and ask, "How was last night?" You'll say, "It was fantastic! ...I can't see. No sens— no feeling, nothing, no sensation down the left side of my body. Oh! I can't even form sentences! You should've come; you would've at least lost an ear!"

• You see the button with the picture of the guy with the plate, 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 my Wizard-Of-Oz phone."
  • On hotel room telephone.

• People do... need... things... that are bad for them. They do. Stimulants and so on. They always have. Every so often, some politician or footballer or actor or whoever it is is caught in a hotel room, surrounded by hookers and cocaine. And everybody else goes: "Oh, the shame of it! How could he? How absolutely dreadful! I'd never do that... I've never had a chance, but I'd never ever do that! Oh, the disgust that courses through me right now — you could bottle it!" But what else are you supposed to give hookers in a hotel room? "Yogurt, anybody? I made some yogurt this morning, would you like some? It's got Granola and everything. You sure? Go on, have a bit."
  • On public figures who get caught in hotel rooms with prostitutes and cocaine.

• EGGS! They're not a food, they belong in no group! They're just farts clothed in substance!

• 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!"
  • On beer.

• "I Know. I Know! Let's Go Potholing! In Croatia!" "Fine. I know a guy who can give us a lift... Me!"

• 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."
  • On wine.

• Vodka is a very deceptive drink, because you drink it and you think, "What is this? This is pointless! It's— you can't taste it, you can't smell it... Why did we waste our money on this, bloody— why are we on a traffic island?"
  • On vodka.

• It turns you into two people: one of you's very nice, you'll go up to total strangers and say, "Come in, come in, sit down, for God's sake, have something. Have my bed." And then you'll go up to people you've known and loved all your life and say, "Get the fuck out of my house! Go on, get out! And leave a tip!"
  • On whiskey

• The most dangerous drink is gin. You have to be really, really careful with that. And you also have to be 45, female and sitting on the stairs. Because gin isn't really a drink, it's more a mascara thinner. "Nobody likes my shoes!" "I made... I made fifty... fucking vol-au-vents, and not one of you... not one of you... said 'Thank you.'" And my favourite: "Everybody, shut up. Shut up! This song is all about me."
  • On the effects of gin.

• The cookery programmes that everybody watches are ridiculous, and so are the house programmes. You know you do not need a fish tank in the atrium you haven't got. And people now, feel under pressure to perform in their lives. Who has the time though? Who really has the time to skin the baby rabbit and dip it in the duck's tears and nail it to the garden roof and get to work with the blow torch so it has just the right texture to match the squash you made that morning using just your elbows. Who has the time? Nobody lives like this! We go around thinking that everybody else does, you know? Because what happens is you come in from work, and you think... maybe at most, if you're getting very adventurous, you will think "TONIGHT, we will eat something that has two colours in it!" BUT YOU DON'T! You end up sitting in front of the television, watching these programmes, eating bread from the bag, dipping it in anything runnier than bread, because there's isn't time for this horse shit!
  • On the cookery programmes.

• 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 wont 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.

• But look at the people who use [their potential] — who do actually give it everything... The Beckhams or Roy Keanes of this world. People charging! Running up and down the field, swearing and shouting at each other. Are they happy? No! They're destroying themselves! Who's happy? You! The fat fucks watching them, with a beer can balanced on your ninth belly, roaring advice at the best athletes in the world. "YOU WANKER!"
  • On potential.

• You see, most modern technology doesn't work. It's supposed to free you, but it's a terrible trap, of course. Mobile phones for example: everybody has one now. I have one and they're awful. They've completely ruined, I mean, people ring you up and say "Hi, it's me, I'm in the bath!" and you go "Well, you're still an asshole, I hope you drown and hello." And they’ve completely dispensed with the whole drama of news, the simple idea of having something to relate, you know. When you could bound in from the garden and pick up the old Bakelite phone that weighted seven pounds and say “MIRIAM'S DEAD”. You can't do that anymore. You're probably there! [pantomiming being on phone] "Yes, her head's rolling back, spit's coming out, her eyes are going everywhere, here, I'll take a picture -click- you see what I mean? Sheeee's fucked!"
  • On mobile phones.

• Everybody does that now. We all take pics… you do the same with holiday photos. You record something to look back on it, even though you’re not really there when you’re taking the picture ‘cause you’re too busy recording it; so you retrospectively go to look back on where you weren’t and tell yourself you had a good time.
  • On taking pics.

• My ideal body, you know, would be just probably something like, ahm... One eye, you probably only need one. A kind of sucker thing instead of teeth, because they just give you grief in the end, you know. And a long, long tube with my arse way over there so I don't have to deal with it. That would be ideal.
  • Describing ideal body.

• "This is our Smeg fridge, the whole house is made of Smeg. We're made of Smeg, aren't we, Roy?" "Yes, dear."
  • On visiting your children's friends' parents.

• I can't relax here. These people have no pubic hair anywhere. We have pubic hair on the ceiling.
  • On dining out at a friend's house.

• So, what else is going on? Music? Fine, here is The Beatles, The Stones come here later this evening, there is The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin has just gone to lunch. So, do you want something to do in between now and then, I'd grow my hair and fornicate if I were you.
• What's going on? What do we do now? "Don't fuck anybody or you die! Never mind, here comes MC Hammer."
  • On sexual freedom throughout generations.

• I remember when singers were singers. Ugly people. Aretha Franklin needed a lot of room to eat her chicken wings. Janis Joplin used to come out in clothes woven from her own vomit. Nina Simone, amazing singer, could look at a railway track and buckle it. It didn’t matter; They were beautiful people because of what they could do.

• I have tried... believe me, I have tried to like rap music. It makes me feel so very, very old. I have tried to get home with the downies.

• "I got my pecs, I got limos, I got bitches, and all my limo's powered by bitch juice, and my spare pecs are in the limo." … "I'm gonna fuck you up. I'm gonna dig up your dad, and shove him up your mum and drink your blood from a drinking cup, you fuck!"
  • Describing rap music.

• Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics... and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what— there's a shortage, and... it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother... right about now... yeah... it's the, it's the funk soul brother... check it out. It's, er, well... it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the... well... it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited—maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say—but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! 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.
  • On The Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim

• 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? Then I'm fucked!
  • On driving

• You know, it's a sad day when your child looks at you and asks: "Daddy, is this organic?" "Organic? I grew up on Angel Delight! We didn't have anything in the house if it wasn't neon!"

• You don't need to turn the light switch on and off, again! You have absolutely NAILED DOWN the principle finding of that experiment; when you turn the lights off, daddy can't see ANYTHING. He steps on your toys trying to find you and kill you... And breaks his foot!

• - Get into the bath.

- NO!

- Get out of the bath.

- NO!

- Do something that's not mindless violence for 5 seconds, will you?

- mmmmNO!

• On children.

• I don’t even see young people on the street anymore. I see youths. You know, how they’re described in police radio reports…. Slumped S-shapes in their hoods, beside their harrowed dogs and a bin full of burning grannies, all texting each other because they’ve given up on speech… plotting something terrible like how to make cider out of blood.
  • On teenagers.

• I don't want to make any huge generalisations about women, I'm not here to do that, it's — it's vulgar. But all I'll say is that they have no feelings. Because it's actually men, you'll find, who are the far more romantic. Men are the people you will hear say, "I've found somebody. She's amazing. If I don't get to be with this person, I'm fucked. I can't carry on, no, I mean it, she's totally transformed my life. I have a job, I have a flat, it means nothing. I can't stand it, I have to be with her. Because if I don't, I'm going to end up in some bedsit, I'll be alcoholic, I'll have itchy trousers. I can't — I can't walk the streets any more." That is how women feel about shoes.

• I asked a women I was with once, simple question, I asked her 'Have you ever eaten pheasant?' See, it's direct, isn't it?! It's enclosed, it contains everything that needs to be said! And she said a wonderful thing. She said "Erm..."—she thought about it—and she said "Er, not really." What does that mean? On any level? I mean, did you suck it and throw it away? Did someone drop it in your drink? What happened? Was it a speeding car, one lick? WHAT, WHAT?!?!
  • On women.

• When you're born, you have a finger up your nose, the other hand on your dick, and you get taller. And that is really it.

• All male arguments are very early '70s, Soviet-made, uni-directional trundling behemoths that say the same thing again and again and again: "I told you I would be late on Tuesday, I told you I would be late, I said it, I heard my own voice, I did say it... I told yoouuuu." Whereas women seem to have these amazing, slinky stealth bombers designed by Jaguar! With a lovely cream leather interior and infinite torque! That's why they can respond by saying "Yes, maybe, alright, but why is the fridge door open?" "I don't understand, I don't understand..."

• You cannot over estimate how infantile men are about sex! Men are people that have sex BECAUSE they have a headache... or are on fire, or have been shot in the head, or whatever it is!
  • On men.

• Or when people break up, they always use a bunch of lines on each other, you know, terrible rubbish lies, like "It’s not you, it’s me, it’s me." It’s NEVER you, it’s always them! You should level with these people! Tell them! "You know that strange sound you used to hear when you were going to sleep? That was me CHEWING the bed, out of sheer boredom! OOOOHH, How I HATE you, I hate you so much it gives me energy! I have to get up early in the morning to hate you because there isn’t time enough in the day. Please, GO AWAY!" Or that other BULLSHIT: "I need more space!" People never quantify exactly how much space they really need.. do they? But strangely enough, it always seems to be the exact same height, depth and breadth as you.
  • On breakups.

• I'm kinda looking forward to being old, you know really really old, so that I can lean over in a restaurant with my son or daughter and say: "You know what I just did? I just pissed myself, you deal with it, then carry on telling me about you job or divorce or whatever the fuck it is, I’m not really listening to you to be honest, which one are you Siobhan or Simon? I can never tell."
  • On getting old.

• "What dya mean theres no fackin chips, I come ere on a plane, you cunt! I've got children ere, what am I spose to do with this fackin tomato fiasco."
  • The English on holiday.

• The weak, sensual, pleasure-loving French. You know, not going to war because they’re all still in bed at two in the afternoon, with the sheets coiled about their knees, lying, there scratching themselves, smoking a Gauloise inside a Gitane, sweating Nice sancerre. Before one of them sloughs off the sheets to pad around the kitchen naked. No, not naked, naked from the waist down. To emphasise their nakedity. Picking up yesterday's croissant crumbs with their sweaty feet. Slashing yesterday's paintings.
• Chocolate bread! That's how they start the day. It's only going to escalate from there. By lunchtime you're fucking everybody you know. I was in Paris recently—they are very good at pleasure. I was walking by a bakery—a boulangerie, which is fun to go into and to say, even—and I went in, a childish desire to get a cake—"Give me one of those chocolate guys," I said—and I was talking to someone on the street, took a bite... I had to tell them to go away! This thing! I wanted to book a room with it! "Where are you from, what kind of music are you into? Come on!" Proper, serious pleasure. Because they know they're gonna die. Nobody goes to church. You think, we're gonna die, make a fucking nice cake.
  • On the French attitude to life.

• "Well, you know what they say about John, anyway?"

"Well, no I don't. Wh—what do they say?"

"Well, you know, apparently he's, uh, he's, you know, he's— [cocks leg] Oh yeah."

"I'm sorry, what are talking about?"

"You know, if I have to spell it out, apparently he's, you know, still picking up twigs in the springtime. Oh yes, one of Yul Brunner's hairdressers. Likes his toast done on three sides, yes."

"What are you talking about?!"

• On euphemisms for homosexuals.

• People who get implants, it's so depressing, you know… People— I don't know. The route of that, you know, maybe they want more love or attention, or what it is, but they always go for the most obvious place, you know? Here... Well if you really want more attention, why not get them in your eyes? And then move you eyes down to where you nipples used to be, put you breasts up on your head, EVERYBODY will pay attention!
  • On implants.

• There's a guy, John Humphries, who does a lot of the interviews, and he sounds like he's been up since about midnight jogging on the spot to accuse people you've never heard of of lying. It's very aggressive right from the off. You turn it on and he goes: "DON'T LIE TO ME!! DON'T LIE TO ME! I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR 45 YEARS, WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM, A FUCKIN TURNIP?!" [...] "WHERE ARE THE BOMBS? WHERE ARE THEY?!?!....Get up so I can kick you again, you lying fuck!"
  • On BBC radio 4.

• That's why the have the programmes presented by 45 guys; "Hi I'm Ted, I'm Bob, I'm Ralph, I'm Dick, I'm Dale, I'm Nick, I'm Will", and they keep changing all the angles of the camera. "I'm over here, I'm at this desk, I'm standing here" and Wendy comes up from under the desk with the financial weather.
  • On American news.

• "Death before dishonour." I always used to wonder, Hey, exactly how much dishonour are we talking about here? 'Cause I could handle quite a lot. I would, for instance, fellate a Smurf before I picked death. I'd cook him a little Smurf omelette as I was doing it, you know, I'd be perfectly happy doing that. Seasoning it with thyme, you know, listening to his happy satisfied Smurf lip smacks. But every man thinks about Smurfs. They don't say it, but they do. That's why I'm here—to be honest. Just once, you know, what would it be like? Nobody needs to know, you go away for the weekend. Just once, to have the blue salty bulb lolling on your tongue... if I don't say it, nobody else will."
  • On regimental mottos.

• And then I did a very male sort of reckoning, I did the calculation, I thought, ‘right. there’s three of you and there’s one of me’—I’m rubbish at maths, by the way—but, in record time, I worked out that it would take, at least, three of me to defend myself against a third of one of them even if he only attacked me with his ass. I’m not a fighter, you know, I’m a bleeder. The best I can hope for would be to drown somebody else with my own blood... if I don’t drown myself before.
  • Meeting the skinheads.

• And they say that after people make love there's a kind of melancholia that descends; la petite mort, you know, the little death. Well, I'm here to tell you, after a romantic night in with yourself, there's a very acute sensation of failed suicide. And I think a lot of that, if you're men is because of the quality of the gear you've got to work with. I mean it's horrible looking. Like a deep sea fish that ate its own arse after about an hour. What's going on down there?! Do something nice, like a kittens head... or something and you could just tickle its chin until it got sick... it would be alright...
  • On masturbation.

• You're looking for a lump in a bag of lumps, that can take some time
  • On testicular cancer.

• Bagpipes covered in hair
  • On testicles.

• This stage, if it hasn't already, probably will see a production of the Vagina Monologues. Which I cannot wait to see, because it sounds so fabulously fucking stupid. Everybody knows that if female genitalia could speak, it would sound exactly like Enya.

Like, Totally (2006)

• 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.

• You're supposed to eat the cows. They're great big lumbering stupid things - they'd be everywhere if we didn't eat them.

• NEVER try the local thing. You know why it's local? Because it's shit, that's why it's local. You eat it, you'll become one of them, you'll turn red and start spouting bigotry and eating tweed with lamb fat dribbling down your chin, don't go near any of that stuff.

• Then you get these articles about how unhealthy life is in the city. You know; mobile phone tumours - far more likely in the city; Well you know what, so is everything else! Including sex, coffee and conversation.

• They have sheets of ham so large that if you bite out the middle, you've saved yourself the price of a poncho.
  • On the countryside.

• America is like the really bad flatmate of the world: 'Oh sorry, did I break all your shit? I d'n't know it was yours. Yeah, I'll replace it sometime... with my stuff.'.

• You had an empire once, Britain. Had a great empire! Impressively commandeered and sequestered from the rest of the world, with great style. You just marched in and said 'You, you and you—fuck off, we're having tiffin.'.

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

• I got bored of the tedious conversations, talking to the dealer in a stairwell where you're not supposed to be, then going back to a depressing room and spending nine hours locked up going "eeerh", then going back to get more with what little money you have left.
  • On drugs.

• I usually never leave the house, but we went to Australia recently—the whole family was there—it was a ridiculous place. Located three quarters of a mile from the surface of the sun, people audibly crackling as they walk past you on the street. That's why they all barbecue, you don't need to cook somewhere like that, you just bring the shit out, fling it on a grill and it bursts into flames. It's not supposed to be inhabited, and when they're not doing that, frying themselves outside, they all fling themselves into the sea, which is inhabited almost exclusively by things designed to kill you; sharks, jellyfish, swimming knives, they're all in there.

• You're talking to a modern, nice, affable German person and they're saying to you something like 'You know, vell, it's a critical time now for Germany within Europe, also globally, economically ve are pretty good, ve have been better. But ve are very vibrant in the theater and arts...' and all the time you'll be listening to this, you're thinking Mmm, yeah, mmm... Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler...

• German food is so bad, even Hitler was a vegetarian. "Would you like some more shtrudleghraf on your shamlw?" How appetising does that sound?

• It sounds like typewriters eating tin foil being kicked down the stairs.
  • On the German language.

• Because that's still how Irish people are seen, as twinkly-eyed fuckers with a pig under their arm, high-stepping it around the world, going 'I'll paint your house now, but watch out, I might steal the ladder later, ohohoho!' Which is only half true!
  • On prejudices about Irish people.

• Somewhere like Ireland, it's more hot-blooded, there's drama included in the fabric of every day, it's there every moment. People wake up going 'OH GOD! WHAT TIME IS IT?' 'It's six minutes to nine.' 'IS IT? I THOUGHT IT WAS ONLY SEVEN MINUTES TO, WE'RE ALL FUCKED! WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE?—DON'T TELL ME, I CAN'T BEAR TO HEAR, I'LL LOOK FOR MYSELF. AAAH! IT'S FIERCE MILD! WHAT ARE WE HAVING FOR BREAKFAST? ARE YOU GONNA DO THAT THING AGAIN WITH THE BREAD WHERE YOU PUT IT IN THE BOX AND BURN IT? WHOSE TROUSERS ARE THESE? COME ON, WE'LL BOTH TRY THEM AT ONCE AND SEE WHO WINS.' It's just more emotional at all times. For no real reason.

• If somebody blocks you when you're walking, you're positively Edwardian in your manners. You do this sheepish little smile together, and you step aside. And you both do it at the same time, and you go "for goodness sake, what a to-do! Oh-ho-ho, dear me! I'll just eh, I'll just—oh, we did it again, can you believe it, I can't believe it! We should be on the stage! One more time, I'll just—oh, how did we ever get this far as a species!" But, for some reason, in a car, that becomes "YOU SPUNK BUCKET!".... from, you know, an eighty nine year-old church warden.
  • On behaviour displayed on foot and in cars.

• "Would you like red or white wine with your piece of vulcanised lizards cock from the moon? How about an extra bread roll, there to dip in your otter vomit pate?" And you're going, "Red or white wine, well, what would you like, darling? I don't know, what would you like?", all to block out the thought that's in your mind which is - "We're gonna die, we're all gonna die, we're all gonna die, right now. The plane is made of metal, the wings are made of metal, we're all eating, and I'm the only non-terrorist aboard, we're all going to die."
  • On travelling by aeroplane.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California. There's a perfectly ordinary English sentence. How did that happen!? Do you know how that happened? 'Cause I'll tell you. Do you know how he got into that position? He got there... by lifting things. Now, you and me, we avoid lifting things; It's unpleasant. Especially heavy things. Even a five-year-old child knows this. He'll go "No, ha ha, fuck it, no, I'll go and stick Lego up my arse, I'm not doing that, no no." He took a different approach. He lifted the heavy- and you know, you lift something if you have to. Piano falls on granny, you lift the piano… 'cause Granny has mixed feelings about the whole situation. Sunday lunch continues. He didn't do any of that. He went over to the heavy thing, and lifted it, and put it back down and didn't move it anywhere... and then he did it again, hundreds of times, and he said to people who stopped to observe this aberrant behaviour, "Look how good I am... at lifting the heavy thing, in my underpants." Now that may seem a little dim. But it was they who said "You're the man. You're the one we want to deal with immigration, and water rates, and taxes, and all that kinda shit." But wait—what we need to know is, how bad was his predecessor at that job? This must've been someone who came to work covered in children's blood every morning.
  • On Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• How small does your cock have to be, to make you walk into a car showroom and say: "Listen, I need something the size of a school, so people know I'm around."

• Most heterosexual people in this country, and around the world, meet each other, and get together with one another when they’re totally, totally drunk. Smashed out of their minds they could not spell their own face. And they go home with that person! And you might spend months with that person, or a year, or you might have a family! This is what happens, this is how you meet. But you wouldn’t buy a toaster when you’re drunk, ‘cause that’s too important. It's got to be crispy in just the right way, hasn't it?
  • On starting relationship.

• You hear people in restaurants competing with each other "I love you". "No, I love you". "Yeah, but I REALLY love you. I love pencils that you have sucked and thrown away ten years ago. I love your eyebrows and your ancestry and EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU! Just eat your food and let me love you, don't speak!" But what they don’t know, of course, at the time is that that dialogue is actually from a really bad science fiction film written by nature - really, what they're saying to one another is: "The race must continue, the race must continue! My vadudium is pointing at your phenungulator, the race must continue!"

• The candlelight dances off her mahogany-coloured skin as she un-robes, and she is smiling from the very middle of herself, and you look at them and you think "This is the one, this is it" and then—and then the cage comes down!
  • On love.

• You’d be alone in the kitchen and twilight would be dwindling, and you could hear the far off cries of the other children playing nearby. You’d be alone in the kitchen because it was your special treat time, where the jelly would come out just for you, and your mother would appear at your side just as a vision of Laura Ashley print dress, smelling of magnolias and biscuits and put the jelly in front of you, and you would pull your chair in. Then the old fashioned bar of ice cream would come down, the one that had to be cut with a breadknife before the two sides were flanked with wafers. You would lift your little spoon up excitedly and winkle out that first divet of black jelly... AND THEN THE CAGE COMES DOWN! The cage with the Japanese fighting spiders inside, your mother strikes a match off her forearm and tells you to dance in the front room for money... You, you never forget that shit, I mean it never goes away.

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

• Your nose hair... which is grey... is in my eye.
  • On how to hurt the ones you really love.

• The meaning of the word "gay" has changed. It used to mean all colourful and happy and homosexual, but now it's a word children use to describe something that's a little bit meh. "You're eating Weetabix? Oh, that's so gay."

• 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.'.

• 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.

• Children are actually very sophisticated. They sleep in your bed for a reason. The child is born, it takes a look around, and thinks "Well this isn't quite what I'd hoped for. All these people are idiots... I wouldn't've have painted the house like this at all... But I've got to make the best of it. I've got to maximize my resources. So the key thing is to stop these people from having any more children."
  • On children sleeping in parents' beds.

• 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.
• That’s why adults are confused a lot of the time. Adults are terribly confused, messed up people. That’s because they forget, really, that they don’t have to pretend all the time. Really, the fact is that you’re not an adult at all - you’re just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don’t understand… "The Middle East? Yeah, I know it was really bad. I wouldn’t have done that. A hysterectomy? Yeah, very painful, the shoulder is a very painful area."
  • On adults.

• Children aren't like that, which is why they look so young, 'cause they always have a sense of style and purpose. When they're walking around, they have a very definite purpose, they're walking. And it's a great walk as well, it's not an adult's sort of bemused shuffle, it's that 'I'm going over here.' And you say 'Why are you going over there?' 'Because I have a harmonica.' 'What are you doing with the harmonica?' 'I'm going to put it in the toilet.' 'Why are you doing tha—' 'Enough questions, goodbye!'
  • On children's attitude.

• Well I’m here, you know? Your house is a medley of disgusting smells, there’s nothing to eat, everybody’s wearing bathrobes, there’s no bar, I can’t fuck anybody. Why am I here?
  • On young male single friends attending baby shower.

• "What do women want?" As though it's really mysterious. As though it's a big deal. All that women want is what anybody wants. You know, friendship and companionship and respect and a certain amount of leadership with submission and a kind of cooperation at all times and pre-emptive empathy and you know, general telepathy. It's no big deal, is it? [...] Traditionally, women have been attracted to uniforms. So it's not difficult to know what women want. Fascists - that's really what they're all after!
  • On women.

• Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is why it's not a great religion. All great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.
  • On Protestants.

• I am actually walking towards the biscuit, I didn't realise I was, but now I do, oh oh oh I am actually eating the biscuit...oh no, oh the shame, oh I don't know what's better, THE BISCUIT OR THE SHAME..oh oh the shame.
  • On Catholicism.

• 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.

• If you are going to have an afterlife, why not just have a physical afterlife? Just come back as a tentacle with a set of lips looking for huge lumps of chocolate to fuck, it'd be much more reasonable.
  • On afterlife (religion).

• I'm quite a compulsive person—I only worked this out recently—I'm compulsive, but I'm also very indecisive. I don't know what I want, but I know that I want it now.

• We want women to look like cakes! "
  • On lingerie.

• What is that? What is that supposed to be? It's never really casual, you always have to turn up. It's never casual unless you're both wearing Sherlock Holmes hats or something. You're covered in crisps, one of you's eating an omelette, the other one's doing a crossword, then it's kind of casual.
  • On the myth of "casual sex".

• Fruit... it's just God showing off. "Look at all the colours I know!"

• Do you know how fat you are, do you? No, you don't, 'CAUSE YOUR FACE IS AN ISLAND TRAPPED IN A SEA OF FLAB! I would stab you to death... but I can't afford to take the two weeks off work!
  • On relationships with fat people.

• "Listen, LISTEN... I agree... with everything... you're carving... on the kitchen table, I do. But do you think maybe this might have something to do with your per-ARGH!"(falls backward as if kicked). That first high kick to the thorax generally does the trick.
  • Talking with women about their periods.

What It Is (2009)

• I live in Scotland, have you been to Scotland? [a few of the audience whoop and cheer] See that's the exact same number of people, as answered that question in the affirmative when I asked it in England... and erm, people... English people, don't go up there, it's nearly half the country, and you say "Why don't you go?" and they go "Ahh, well, you know, it's very dark and dreary"… 'cos they get so used to the crocodiles and the tropical storms down there in England. "Dark and dreary, you can't understand the accents, the food's disgusting, and a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, people injecting temazepam into each other's stumps... other wise I'd go, you know?"

• It's a myth that men don't have their own version of PMT, of course they do - every woman knows this. It's a very simple experiment to conduct, all you've got to do is be with a man, wait until he starts doing something and then go up and talk to him. "WHAT?! What is it now?! I'm opening fish fingers can't you see?! You come in here, walking on the floor - breathing the air like it's yours - talking and talking and I'm doing something! Look they've fallen on the floor, are you happy?! Are you happy now?! Every time I try and do something for myself, you carbonize and then shit on my dreams... You're just like your your whole family! Why do I even dare to think I could dream I could imagine I could hope?!"
  • On male "periods".

• Men don’t know anything! Men don’t know when their lives became so entirely awful, when everyone else turned into such a tosser! A man does not know how he came by the half a pie he is holding in his hand. And scientists—those frauds!—seize on this, and try to use it as proof of the mysteries of human consciousness and the unknowable nature of the brain, which is rubbish! The brain is the simplest organ in the body. It only has three bits. There’s the front bit, which is the bit you scratch when you come in at half one in the morning, and the person you live with says, “Where the fuck were you?”. The middle bit, which tries to come up with the excuse. And the back bit, which plays the last song that was on in the pub.
• 99,9% of men are convinced that they have to live silently, with a bitter irony of the twist of fate, that means, nobody knows they're really a spy. And an amazing guitarist. Men give serious time and thought on "How would I deal with, if the rocket came down of that alley right now? Yeah, I'd handle that situation pretty well!" A spy who plays guitar at night! I basically think, you know, I'm what would have happened if James Dean had lived and discovered carbohydrates and orthopaedic shoes. You have to tell yourself this bullshit just to keep going! Cause you're constantly being reminded how redundant you are!
  • On men.

• Sometimes is just, you know... insulting.

- It's all sex with you, isn't it?

- No, no, it's not... No, I resent that! Sometimes I want a snack... during.

• And women as a group, en masse, do show contempt for men, en masse... as a group, you hear a lot of contempt for men: "Oh look! Look at them, look! There they go! One of them's trying to DO something".

• We end up back with each other. There’s nowhere else to go. People! 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! ‘Cause you’ve got two people walking around together all the time trying to remember all the different shit they have to lie about to each other!
  • On relationships.

• 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!
  • On modern parenting

• Like when you watch young people on the street and they’re talking. And doing those handshakes that take three quarters of an hour, with the amazingly younger language: “Yeah, yo, dawg, kicking back with the chill, rad.” WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SAY HELLO?
• The first half of your life is spent getting over yourself. You think you’re amazing, unique. Young people walk around going, "You know the funny thing is I was just in the kitchen but now I’m here in the bedroom, get a load of me! I just go on and on!" And that’s around the age when you meet somebody else – when you’re totally unbearable. Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There’s nothing worse to look at in the world! Going around going, "I can’t believe I met you cause you’re amazing and I’m amazing and we’re surrounded by shitheads, it’s just amazing! Hey, I know this really good bar, let’s go and make it better." In the second half of your life you realise how like every other hump who drew breath you really are. Except you’re MORE boring.
  • On young people.

• 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!"[...] You never hear someone go "Be realistic! Let me oil you."
• Adulthood feels like walking around in the desert with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you.
  • On adulthood.

• Would you please - stop - taking - pictures - on your tiny - annoying (whispering) fucking camera. This is happening to you in real time, you are having the experience. It's not much point to verify that you were at the event when you're actually here.
  • To an audience member.

• You ask women, “You know how painful is it? What are talking about here?” And you don’t get an answer, you get anger...and it always starts with the melon...“IMAGINE A MELON!...COMING THROUGH YOUR FACE!...fuckin' stay there, I’ll get a melon!”
  • On asking women about childbirth.

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

• Here your Prime Minister has an approval rating of 75%... which is- What's he doing? Nobody ever gets 75%, is he coming round at night, with a pot roast, touching you on the knee and telling you that you’ve lost weight? What’s going on?! This is madness, nobody gets 75% not even when you’re madly in love with somebody, and you’re fucking each other’s brains out do you give each other 75%! You’ve got to hold a bit back, keep the other person guessing you know? ...keep it at a steady 40...
  • On Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

• Or Berlusconi, in Italy, right; the envy of the world, Italy, in terms of history, art and culture, 98 different political parties, and they still managed to elect him! He’s so fucking crooked he sleeps on a spiral staircase! So thoroughly corrupt, every time he smiles an angel gets gonorrhoea! He's had so many face-lifts, his face has moved to the top of his head, you have to get on a step-ladder to watch him lie!
  • On Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

• And we all think that we’re very rational and very secular, but we make gods all the time. Everybody went apeshit when Barack Obama got elected. I was delighted. Everybody was thrilled: a sane, rational, intelligent human being in an important office. Great! But his biggest problem is everybody else! Is us! ‘Cause everybody’s in love with him! He stands up there - he’s very convincing and commanding and makes sense - he says: "It’s a difficult time, everyone needs to work together and be realistic about what we need to do..", and all that stuff - and everbody’s looking at him going: "NO! You do it! You’re SUPER JESUS. You’re so handsome when you’re serious. Do you work out?"
  • On Barack Obama

• We need to believe something, and you’re not allowed to believe in religion… Well, you can, but people will laugh at you and throw things. ‘Cause it was just sort of decided in the 20th century that religion is basically a formalized panic about death. Look at the Catholic church, the campest organization on the planet with the purple robes, gold bits on the side, jewellery so big if they let it fall it would kill people... What else can it be, but this sort of ritual of panic about death? “DEATH IS COMING! Quick, put on the gold hat!”
• You see, people never really grow up. I don’t mind most religious people, I talk to them. I listen to them, you know, banging on. “I prayed very hard and then the fairy came.” “Did he? Good. Have a biscuit.” I only get annoyed when they try and make me see the fairy. “You have to let the fairy into your heart.” Look, I wouldn’t let him into my garden, okay? I’d shoot him on sight, if he existed, which he doesn’t. Now have another biccie and be quiet, will you please? But you can absolutely understand the desire to believe in something, to support you. Children like to be supervised by adults. That’s why children go, “look, no hands” or “look, I can do this” or “I’m really good at this”. Whatever it is. Because it validates them, it shows them that they are there, that somebody else is watching over them. Grown-ups are the same, not that there is any such thing as a grown-up, really. They liked to be watched by something. Because the planet’s not gonna miss us, when we’ve finished fucking it up and killing each other. So we needed the idea of God to have somebody to miss us, or at least notice that we weren’t there anymore.
• A couple of days ago I saw one of those signs outside of churches and it said "Jesus said: I am the light of the world". Which is a very male view, you know, if Jesus had been Jesusina it would've been more modest. You know because it's a women, she would've been traditionally more modest. Jesusina would've gone: "Well I'm quite bright".
  • On religion.

• So, yes, death. When you're young, you think about it… Well, you don't really think about it, you know - you have the intelligence of raspberry jam, you're not thinking about anything. But it's there, as a motive force, making you do things. Go and get a job. Go and find a flat. Find somebody else. Put them in the flat. Make them stay. Get a toaster. Go to work. Get on the bus. Look at your boss. Say, "fuck". Sit down. Pick up the thing. Go blank. Scream internally. Go home. Listen to the radio. Look at the other person. Think, "WHY? Why did this happen?" Go to bed. Lie awake! At night! Get up. Feel groggy. Put the things on - your clothes - whatever they're called. Go out the door, into work - same thing! Same people, again, it's real, it is happening, to you. Go home again! Sit, Radio, Dinner - mmm, GARDENING, GARDENING, GARDENING, death. And so, the young woman thinks that if she has the right curtains, she can keep death and all other problems at bay. But the young man knows that the only way to keep death at bay, is by having sex pretty much constantly. Now, because nature's so clever, it makes the couple compromise by giving them children, so they never have to have sex again, and then the children pull the curtains down so there was NEVER anything to worry about in the first place!
  • On death.

• The other morning, I woke up. I was frightened – I’m always frightened in the morning, I don’t know where I am. But I heard this beautiful reassuring sound, it sounded like my childhood. I thought, what’s that? Is it? Church bells behind the hill? Or, no – it’s an ice cream van, in the rain. It was me, BREATHING!
• You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!
  • On getting old.

• Science is a joke. Look at the scientific explanation for the origin of life as we know it. No wonder we have creationists, you know, those people - God love them - who tell their children that, you know, originally we all went to school with dinosaurs, or whatever it is that they tell them. But no wonder they exist, because listen to the explanation for the origin of life itself - it doesn’t sound very scientific. "There was a big BANG! And then we all came from monkeys." "What? That’s it?" "Yeah, shop's closed, fuck off!" I need more than that! There must be more than - BANG! *monkey sounds* "Honey I’m home!" - come on! It’s such a boring theory, anyway! It’s much more interesting if you reverse the order.
  • On science.

• You know, people come in here with their fucking camera phones - everything’s a camera nowadays; you pick up a piece of fruit, it takes a picture of you. Or the computers which are everywhere which is proof that we like to be watched. That what we’ve replaced God with, technology! We’re fucking afraid to be alone, in a lift, in a taxi cab, we need cameras everywhere recording us unless we realise we’re alone, we might do something scary... like whimper, I don’t know!
  • On modern technology

• Perfume is a good example of a product gone all wrong. When I was a child, it was a semi-exotic thing and it was called something stupid like "Fleur de Fleur" and you would give it to your mother or aunty at Christmas and it was advertised by some dopey looking woman in a field of sunflowers and she looked like she'd been hit by a tractor because she was going *flails with arms*. She couldn’t just get over how nice she smelled. Now, because we’re so jaded, we’ve consumed so much, our attention can only be grabbed in a violent way. So it’s always advertised by these constipated, exo-keletal bitches who are sneering at you and it’s called something horrible like "Homicide"! "Dysentery"! "Urban Dysentery" for boys and girls!
  • On consumerism.

• WHAT'S WRONG WITH US?! We're the only organism the planet is actively asking to fuck off! By burning things, and freezing things, and melting things on us! It's like going past the ocean and seeing it spit out whales, "Fuck off, I've had enough of you!" Passing the eucalyptus tree as the koalas hang on, the tree's going [Swaying violenty] "Get - the fuck - away - from me!"
  • On climate change.

• These fingers are from Florence. Yves Saint Laurent himself designed my arse. My nipples are reconstructed from an early unfinished blue print by Coco Chanel, hence their lopsided charm. One of them is on my shoulder. The other five I keep handily between my toes, which, in themselves are a bit embarrassing. But fuck it, it was the 80’s, you had to have suede.
  • On fashion and cosmetic surgery.

• Young people, should be allowed to go up to one another and say “Hi” and that’s it – they go off and do something wonderfully stupid together...like have a gap year, there’s no other justification for that as far as I can see. What do young people have gap years for? They haven’t done anything yet! Why don’t they have a full year, where they do 9 times as much work as they’ve ever done in their life to prepare them for what the rest of adult hood feels like - which wandering around a desert, with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you.
  • On gap years and life.

• You know, fucking mornings! What is that about? That time is a huge lie. "Get up, get up! We’re going to be late! Quickly! Late, imagine it! The disaster if we’re late! What’ll happen if we’re late? I can’t even bear to think about it!" Late is an idea. Late is bullshit. It doesn’t matter how fucking late you are, you can turn up in your pyjamas scratching your nuts with a fork, the same old shit’s gonna be there. It’s a lie! People running up to you saying, "what do you think?" in the morning! "What do you think?"! "Think? Think?! I’m not even fucking breathing, go away with your 'think'!" It takes you three quarters of an hour to find your face and apologise to it. And how do they lure you back into the world, into the human race, into consciousness itself? With the great traditional breakfast! As eaten here and in Britain and Ireland and lots of other places: Fried slices of dead pig, tubes of dead pig, some fungus and a chicken's period on a plate, "WELCOME BACK! WE MISSED YOU WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING! ENJOY!" Of course you can always have the healthy option, of course you can, of course you can!... Some yummy cereal, mmhmmmm dust with milk! Says it right there on the box in big primary coloured letters ‘contains fibre’. Goody gumdrops, I was up all night fantasizing about fucking fibre. You know that feeling when you get a belly full of fibre and you can skip round the room taunting everybody who didn’t get theirs? Remember all those times in your life when you stopped strangers in the street and screamed at them “I need some fibre!"
  • On mornings.

• - I know what you're thinking!

- Oh do you? So do I. I know what everyone’s thinking: I'd like to be lying face down in a cushion, with my mouth full of chocolate, and something lovely happening to my lower half. Would you like your prize now, or later?

• Women are not allowed to be seen to enjoy themselves on lots of ways. They have a test for that in Ireland now, they’ve scientifically perfected that. The Madonna-Whore-Quotient of a woman. You know, if when a woman puts her hand together to pray, and when she’s crying the blood and she levitates and you don’t get a sustained hum in A Flat, she’s a fucking whore!

• Where is the cake? Cake is the language of love. I don't see any cakes in the building. You know, people say that to you: "I love you, I love you!" Yeah? Gimme a fuckin' eclair.

• The ultimate human shopping list: I’d like some illegal, some forbidden, some frowned upon and some downright disgusting, please. I’ll have that to go, thank you!

• You have to have a good relationship with pleasure, Australians seem to, on the whole your approach seems to be to go, "What's that? Ahh, yeah, it's one of those" which is a lot healthier than the Irish one, which is to go, "What's that? That looks nice. I'll wait till everyone's asleep, then I'll steal it, so nobody will see me enjoy myself and then I won't have to feel ashamed. I can just let the guilt fester for the rest of my life and spend all my remaining years drunk."
  • On pleasure.

• - Where are you?

- I'm upstairs in our room rubbing your expensive creams on my knees, I just want to see what happens. Don't try to get in, I have blocked the door with huge lumps of Turkish delight and I'm listening to showtunes. Stay away.

• And I’ve been on the road for too long, I know I have, because I was in the supermarket the other day, and I saw this tiny, heartbreaking can of beans. And it really made me want to cry. I just thought how old or sick or small do you need to be to need those beans? And it was on a high shelf, you know, you’d be climbing the ladder for days just to get at those four beans.
  • On warning on cigarettes boxes.

• And what is the point of putting a picture of the perfectly ordinary Irish smile on the box of cigarettes? what's that all about? what you supposed to achieve?

Yeah, Yeah (2011)

• And the thing is woman do have to do all kinds of things themselves. And they lie about it 'cause of all the pressure. Woman go and get their hair made bullet-proof and get the implants. The silly clothes and the stupid shoes everybody wears now. You know these... And they say: "Oh, l enjoy. l did it for me, you know. l like the fact that it takes me 45 minutes to get in or out of a chair." l've always wanted to look like a prawn who's being airlifted. lt's a total lie. That's not the kind of thing a person does for themselves. You know what l did for me? I had an eclair inside an eclair. That's the kind of thing you do for yourself.
• The truth is that women are like chick peas under a psychopath's hat. They can be cherishable and zingy and suprising. But you ask too many questions and you get killed.
• Don’t get feminist on me! Look, I’m not a feminist, 'cause I'm a man. I'm not qualified. I can't be a feminist. Just like most women.. If women were serious about feminism they would have everything that feminists talk about getting. Equal pay, you could have that tomorrow! IF... women would give up bitching about one another for FIVE MINUTES. Which doesn’t seem to be possible.
  • on women.

• If you're a young man, you know, you live in a sexual tyranny anyway and your penis is Kim Jong. Sex decides everything. You can have a car crash. You lie in the ditch thinking: "What is the erotic twist in the situation? I can't quite seem to see it yet".
  • on men.

• Who sleeps, really? If you’re a proper adult person in the 21st century, how can you relax, at all? Your mind keeps churning. You think, "What if this thing happens?! What if that thing happens?! What if they happen together?! What if I lose my job?! I hate my fucking job! But what if I lose it?" Your mind is a hive of worms. And worms don't live in a hive, so it already feels unnatural. You lie in bed, beside your partner... "What if I died?!" If you don't have a partner, you just think, "What if I died? ...Okay, I would be dead." But if you do have a partner and family, you'd think, "What if I died? How would they cope?" They wouldn't! They would be out in the street in half an hour, stealing food from seagulls mouths! Or worse! They WOULD cope! They'd have a much nicer, cleaner house! And an improved sense of self-worth. Probably more money! And inevitably your partner would find somebody within the first 3-4 days, and begin a tumultuous sexual relationship. They would be having sex a lot in your bed when you were dead! The morning, the afternoon, the evening, and the night time would be the main times they would be having sex, in your bed, when you were dead. Feeding each other lobster with their bare hands, to give each other more energy to try it in new and more demanding ways. When your realise you are lying besides somebody who is waiting for you to die! And what's more, they're sleeping to make the time go faster.
  • on adulthood.

• Days are stupid length. They are just long enough to get regret and then you have to go to bed.
  • on days.

• Scotland, the country where they fry the food five times to make sure it’s dead; the country where they invented bacon flavour mouthwash.

• You laugh at the North, you think they’re all funny little short people who live in a big pie. Trying to sort out their relationship with the definite article. Throwing darts at their dinner.
  • on Northern people.

• Some people don’t like Mr Cameron. Mr Cameron and his cube of air. He doesn’t seem to know where to put that thing down. He can’t find a place for it. I think the reason he can’t get rid of it is because it contains the essence of the Big Society, and nobody wants that shit.
  • on David Cameron

• The belief system that if you smiled hard enough into the face of God, you would eventually shit money.
  • on Blairism.

• You know what you think, you know where you are on the spectrum... You’re Left or you’re Right really, that’s it. And if you’re left-wing, you’re boring. That’s the truth. Nobody wants to hang around with you, you’re very dull. You’re the voice of conscience, y’know the one saying: “Now look. Put it down, we should all be nice to one another. Let’s try and not eat everything today.” Very dull voice... The right-wing... Cruel? Yes. Vicious? Certainly. But honest. Not a sophisticated philosophy, it just says: “What is this? Do we fuck it or eat it? Let’s try half and half.”... Now you might be liberal! You could be, I forgot. You could be one of those thoughtful, troublesome people. People who say: “Well things are actually a little bit like this AND a little bit like that. Soooo, let’s do whatever you say.” If you’re liberal, you have no purpose. You are the thing in your kitchen you never use. Something you bought once, while you were out at a market feeling frisky.
  • on politics.

• They tell you, you can get everything you need from pulses and lentils and things like that. Yeah. Everything you need, except company, which is not to be had, because you are dying, bent double in a miasma of your own toxic farts.
  • on Green Party

• What does anyone think or believe any more? Belief itself is treated with disgust. Belief is now regarded as a kind of fat marbling the brain. Who here believes in organized religion? (NO!) Who doesn't? (AUDIENCE CHEERING LOUDLY) You see? People in the West don't believe in anything! And we're proud of it! "What you believe in?" "Nothing! Nothing!" "What did you have for lunch? I don't fucking believe you!" We don't believe in anything. We treat religion with contempt. Faith. All that rubbish. What are you, a child? Believing in this, you do good and then you know, you die and then you get a biscuit! What are you, a fucking idiot? What's wrong with you? We don't believe in anything! Because we know about science! Believe in science! That's the only thing we know about! The atoms and quarks and things. We don't understand it! Any of it! But... But that's the case. So, that's totally different to having a faith! Isn't it?
  • religion vs science.

• The dark creates all kinds of things. The dark creates music, particular kinds of music. Horrible folk music you don't want to listen to. And heavy metal which they love in dark places. They love it in Scandinavia. They have all these metal bands, you know? And they're not like the English ones or American ones that have names like Metallica and Megadeth and so on. The names are... 'Cause English isn't their first language in Scandinavia even though they all speak it. So they call their bands things like Anus Hammer, Egg Smuggler, all that stuff. lt's a very interesting look, heavy metal, you know... You have everything down here. You've got jazz and ska and everything, you know. Whatever, folk music, too, probably. Folk music has its own look. lt has a... You know, people wear dungarees 'cause they say, "l'm a man or a woman of the people. This isn't my main thing, you know. l'm just like you really. My main job is harvesting turnips. Anyway, this next number is called Cross-eyed Mary of the Lowlands. l'd like to dedicate it to my wife." And then there's jazz, you know, where you get people in suits but they're non-conformist suits 'cause they're wearing a pink shirt with a green jacket and a blue tie and trousers too complex to describe. 'Cause they're saying, "Yes, l'm wearing a suit but l work for me. And my job is to play the electrified tractor horn till 5:00 in the morning, so fuck you." Heavy metal is a very interesting look. The look is a kind of an argument. lt's an argument against Darwinism. Because what the people who are involved are saying, is that attraction is not necessary for reproduction. That's why they shave all the hair off where it would naturally be and cultivate it in places it shouldn't be. And that's why the music is so angry. You know, if you shave all the hair off your arse and get into a pair of leather trousers, you're gonna sing an angry song. lt's not gonna be some wistful ballad about that crazy summer in Paris with Justine. lt's going to be much more, "Death in the morning, death for breakfast. Little pots of toasted death." Heavy metal is what happens when a group of people with competitively disgusting appearances come together to try to kill air. No, partly... Partly, that is probably age speaking. l just can’t tolerate certain things, you know.
  • on Heavy Metal

• Why would anybody want to go skiing ? You could sit in the comfort of you own kitchen and break your knees with a hammer. What is the human impulse ? What’s wrong with these people ? I think it’s because they’re so closeted, their lives are so comfortable, they actually seek out danger as a pastime. If you’re poor, you don’t go and look for danger ‘cause you’re surrounded by it. Your accommodation is dangerous, your neighbours are dangerous. Your own family are pretty handy. You probably have a couple of moves yourself. Your dinner can fucking kill you anyway so you don’t have to go and look for danger.
  • on skiing

• Now, The Archers is not a programme I’m hugely familiar with, because every time the theme music comes on, I leap across the kitchen with an athleticism I don’t actually possess, in search of the “fuck off” button on the radio. I gather it’s about some people who are very, very worried about getting the crisps to the fete on time. No wonder everybody's hooked.
  • on The Archers.

• This is from my granny. She was a beautiful, spiritual person. She always used to say: "Doesn't matter how big the fucker is. They all have a neck." Another thing she used to say was: "Never get involved with more than 11 people sexually at one time. You cannot keep everybody happy. Work on the farm deteriorates almost immediately. Don’t do that."

Other

• It's a totally inhospitable place, you shouldn't be here—the sun—you live about three quarters of a mile from it; I've seen insects walking around with kneepads; you fling yourselves into the sea when you're not actually walking around audibly crackling in the heat. And the sea is full of jellyfish, sharks and other things who hate you, but you persist in living here. So you know, it's a jail you live in. It's lovely, you've done wonderful things with it, but you're all still in denial.
  • On Australia, at the Melbourne Comedy Fest.

• "Hi, how are you today? I'm Tony, I'm going to be your server. I've got some very exciting specials to tell you folks about right here. We've got our deep-pan re-re-fried chocolate ice cream pizza, which comes with a complementary pacemaker. If you're watching your weight you might want to try our No Hope Protein Salad, absolutely delicious. Philippe, our maitre d', will dig out some photographs of you looking kind of tubby, you know, on the Internet, and then we all kind of point and laugh at you and just sort of rub a single chickpea on your lip until you cry. Would you like some water?"
  • During a skit before a commercial break on BBC America Comedy Live Presents Dylan Moran (2005).

• "Shut up, you wretch! I rescued you from the city streets. Without me you'd still be fucking bouncing into buildings out there in the laser neon rain with the tabloids poltergeisting through the air, wondering where the fuck you are, you clueless dolt! I took you in for the waif you were, rescued you from every doorway which was a waiting set of jaws—every half-closed window, a pirate's eye—I took you in and rescued you from your own stupidity! If you had a shred of moral decency, you'd chain yourself to the radiator and devote the rest of your life to acts of sexual abasement!" But you don't say that. You say "Yes, I see what you mean, I see where you're coming from".
  • Amnesty International (Ireland), Stop You're Killing Me [DVD] recorded live at Dublin's Vicar Street Comedy Club in November 2004.

• I apologise for even bringing this up, but it is two thousand and something, whatever it is, and it is still very difficult to have a rational conversation about periods.. to a woman.. when it could be relevant. You see I’m almost instinctively euphemistic about it, I don’t want to get into trouble even here! I only realised recently I’ve been having the same kind of polite conversation all my life, where you say to somebody: “..Hmm?.. You don’t - you don’t want to go to the restaurant, that we said we’d..? No, me neither. And you don’t want to go to the other place I’m about to suggest- me neither! Or any of the places I can think of, I hate them all as well. But listen, the thing is, when we do find somewhere, and I’m sure we will cause you’re starving, I know that, you’ve said it several times; when we get there, I’m actually not that worried about food myself. Main thing for me is, when we get in there, could you run over some of my flaws? Cause you know, I just can’t keep track! I don’t know what it is, if you weren’t here, really I’d be fucked, I really would.” I don’t do that shit anymore. I just say: “Listen, listen.. Are you having your period? Cause you know what, it’s humiliating to argue with a hormone. And I know you’re crying and everything, but you know what, I quite fancy a cry too, I really do. You’ve kind of stolen the show and the waiter’s coming over now but I really would like to cry as well. By the way, crying isn’t proof of a greater capacity to feel, it’s proof of a greater capacity to cry. And I’m not paying for this, fuck you.”
  • Amnesty International (Ireland), Stop You're Killing Me [DVD] recorded live at Dublin's Vicar Street Comedy Club in November 2004.

• "You're a wonderful lover."

"Yes probably, but am I the best?", because that's what men want to know, because they're pathetic. And women dont have that competitive thing, so they go: "There is no best."

"AHA! Who was he? ...I know, some guy with blue eyes, loads of teeth and hair and skin and all that modern stuff, who always looked as if he was on a boat and gave up his job in cybergenics to go and plant trees in some fuckin' place and he had long lashes that could quote huge chunks of Baudelaire as he stirred his cafe latte, and he wrote a whole load of books and never told you and when you found them in an airport one day you were doubly impressed and then he played lead cello in the Bulgarian orchestra and didn't tell you until you'd spent an hour twanging around on your ratty fucking guitar looking for the first two chords of Da Doo Ron Ron. He was mysterious and everything , he couldn't call 'cause he was smuggling Crocrobian children over the border to get to safety using his fucking knowledge of missile tactics and his inheritance and everything then he got involved in some underground documentary film group and was killed in a really tragic way for sedition, one of those guys, HUH? I know your type!! Well you just hand me that fuckin' shoe horn over there, I'll take this T-shirt off and show you who's the best around here! I may have spent too long on the toilet but I've almost got some feeling back in one of my legs!"

• I'm waiting 'til they get all this kit in one six by three inch lump of metal and you just stick it up your arse and it does everything for you. You get music all the time, everything's in vivid colour, your taste and all your hearing is enhanced, and you never have to do anything ever again. You can stay in bed and just live in this vortex of sensation.
  • on being asked by Jonathan Ross about modern technology

• (after coughing) ...and then you cough and die.
  • Monster.

• (after coughing) I have... something. It'll clear up. Might take me with it, but we'll see.
  • Like, Totally

• (after coughing) Excuse me. I have a touch of everything.
  • What It Is.

• 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.
  • on social networking sites like Facebook