Dylan Moran
America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.
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.
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.
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.
I get a phone call once every 18 months from some mad person who wants me to do something for less than no money and they give me about a week's notice. That's my film career, most of the time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’re not an adult at all - you're just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don't understand...Collection: Children
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.Collection: Funny
Its not easy being a man you know. I had to get dressed today… and there are other pressures.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
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!Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
Money can't buy you love, but it can get you some really good chocolate ginger biscuits.Collection: Love
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?Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
I don't do drugs. If I want a rush I just stand up when I'm not expecting it.Collection: Funny
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!Collection: Funny
I used to live with two other guys. We used to cook two things. The first one was called 'cheese... thing' and that was where you get something and you melt cheese over it and the first one to guess what it is doesn't have to wash up. That's obviously quite Mediterranean; the other one was less complex. It was just called 'cheese fantasy.' That's where you come in, very drunk, at about five in the morning and find an apple and just pretend there's some cheese on it.Collection: Morning
Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There’s nothing worse to look at in the world.Collection: Two
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?Collection: Religious
Tequila? It's not even a drink. It's a way for having the cops around without using a phone.Collection: Funny
Religion is the yeast of death cakes. It is the most awful agent on a vulnerable mind. It's the refuge of alienated and lonely people. It's what people had before television. It yokes people together into an imaginary world. It is just people talking to their imaginary friends, at length. I wouldn't mind, but some of the people are world leaders.Collection: Lonely
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.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
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?"Collection: Smell
Fruit... it's just God showing off. "Look at all the colours I know!"Collection: Funny
It's easy to smile when you have a squirrel's intellect.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
You learn very very quickly that it is mostly about swearing, actually. That's all you're doing, swearing, in a box with wheels.Collection: Funny
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!Collection: Funny
You know what you are? You're a beard with an idiot hanging off it.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Funny
You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!Collection: Funny
All the shy people are doomed! Natural selection favors the loud and the aggressiveCollection: People
I'll work for whoever wants to hire me. Even the jewelry channel.Collection: Want
I've always wanted to visit [Washington]. The Smithsonian has some fantastic archival material on blues music, which I'm really into. There's a ton of stuff I want to do there. but it just never happened.Collection: Stuff
Children are the most honest critics. They will say "You're funny", but also "You're pathetic - go away."Collection: Children
I dont watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when youre alone and someones voice is coming through their work. Theres a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.Collection: Voice
In my personal life, my family makes me laugh more than anybody; I think that is the same for everybody. I certainly hope it is.Collection: Thinking
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.'Collection: Funny
We all know smoking is bad. I know I'm going to quit someday, if I thought I wasn't I'd quit now.Collection: Funny
Men look at breasts the way women look at babies. 'Aw, isn't that lovely?'Collection: Funny
People do need a social license to go, "Ha ha ha," and have a good time. It's a strange thing. There's a lot of social ritual around comedy and laughter. It's a bonding experience for groups, but nobody can tell you much about how funny somebody is. Sometimes people just need to be in a group and be laughing together, just like they need to be in a group in watching some really terrifying film.Collection: Laughter
I've got better things to do than read rubbish about myself.Collection: Rubbish