Brendan Behan Quotes

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement. To get drunk was a victory.

Failure at a task may be the result of having tackled it at the wrong time.

Ah, bless you, Sister, may all your sons be bishops.

A man is fortunate if he encounters living examples of vice, as well as of virtue, to inspire him.

I saw a notice that said "Drink Canada Dry" and I've just started.

A pedestrian ought to be legally allowed to toss at least one hand grenade at a motorist every day.

Critics are like eunuchs; they can tell you what to do, but they can't do it themselves!

New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.

Many a man has decided to stay alive not because of the will to live but because of the determination not to give assorted surviving bastards the satisfaction of his death.

The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of matress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as I ever tasted.

There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman.

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.

No man can discover his own talents.

I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

Most horror movies are certainly that.

I cannot imagine any crime worse than taking a life, can you? -It'd depend whose life.

Prostitutes, more than any other profession, help keep American marriages together.

They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues.

You made one mistake. You married me.

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

When two men fight over a woman it's the fight they want, not the woman.

Whatever you hold in contempt is your jailer.

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.

I'm a Communist by day and a Catholic as soon as it gets dark.

I am a daylight atheist.

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.

I think weddings are sadder than funerals, because they remind you of your own wedding. You can't be reminded of your own funeral because it hasn't happened. But weddings always make me cry.

Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.

The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.

When I'm talking to people I like to stop and quote myself. My quotes have a way of spicing up conversation.

I never felt so much at home as I do in New York. I must be a devil.

Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself.

An author's first duty is to let down his country.

There's no bad publicity except an obituary.

Message? What the hell do you think I am, a bloody postman?

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

The only thing I envy in young people is their livers.

Nothing hurts more than the friendly letter that one never got around to writing.

Scream at God if that's the only thing that will get results.

In a society which really supported marriage the wife would be encouraged to go to the office and make love to her husband on the company's time and with its blessing.

The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think.

That you, sister. May you be the mother of a bishop.

A general and a bit of shooting makes you forget your troubles ... it takes your mind off the cost of living.

God forgive us-but most of us grew up to be the sort of men our mothers warned us against.