Dylan Moran Quotes

There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room, you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything.

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

You exaggerate your own reactions.

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.

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.

Go and lie down in the dark... for hours... and don't move. I'm locking the door now

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.'

If you're talking about crowd enthusiasm, it varies. I have a decent following in Australia so I like there. I'm interested in playing everywhere.

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.

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

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

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

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'll have to look into [Washington] D.C. a bit more. I know it's given over to the administration and the bureaucracy connected to it. It's a super-organism of the American state. But there's also a parallel city in there where normal people live.

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

I just wish I had longer. It's very frustrating. As you know, to people over here, cities like [Washington] D.C. are iconic. We know them so well. It's very frustrating to be in one of them for 36 hours and have a show to do because you can't really do anything.

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.

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.

People will kill you over time, and how they'll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like 'be realistic.'

Don't you DARE use party as a verb in my shop

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 enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

I'm just a guy who happens to work in public from time to time. I've built a reputation as an established comic, not as a celebrity - a celebrity is someone who is famous but doesn't do anything.

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

That's a rather flippant quote "drinking and writing bad poetry" from me. I mean, I said it, but I was doing other stuff too. I certainly didn't manage the full stretch of four years.

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?"

Organic? I grew up on Angel Delight. We didn't have anything in the house if it wasn't neon!

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

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

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!

Some people have told me that I'm grumpy; it's not something that I'm aware of. It's not like I walk around poking children in the eye... not very small ones, anyway.

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 your eyes down to where your nipples used to be, put your breasts up on your head, everybody will pay attention!

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.

You have to assume that you're talking to the most intelligent, tuned-in audience you could ever get. That's the way you're going to get the best out of people. Whether they know you or not shouldn't matter for comedy. They should get to know you pretty quickly. and they should be having a good time pretty quickly.

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 write all the time, but you just want to be careful what you put out. That's all. You want to have the confidence that you've done what you need to do to it, because otherwise it's an exercise in vanity.

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

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

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

What are children anyway? Midget drunks. They greet you in the morning by kneeing you in the face and talking gibberish. They can't even walk straight.

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.

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.

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

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?

Wow this place is really big isn't it? They must do proper stuff here, like opera and all that...shite.

I don't go to different countries to criticise their political system and tell them what they should be doing - what do I know?

When I was young, all the politicians looked like ancient Latin teachers or greengrocers. They were mumbly, stumbly men with their hair blowing in their eyes, walking into trees, opening the wrong door. They had no idea how to present themselves.