Dylan Moran quotes:

Maybe this is just me, but as time goes by, I'm more bewildered by modernity. It gets more unfathomable with every passing year.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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'm really not big on nationalism, to be honest with you. I really don't think it gets people anywhere except near a pile of dead bodies. I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it.

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've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you.

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.

Do your own thing. Speak in your voice.

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.

I actually very rarely see comedy myself, and although I admire the work of some comics, it does come from all over, so I'll get a charge out of some fiction writers and poets.

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 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.

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.

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.

In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways.

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.

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.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

You know, people sometimes say to me, 'Do you prefer to do this or that, act or do stand-up or write' but the thing that I enjoy most is the difference between all of them, because you're always learning. I don't go around thinking of myself as a great anything. I'm actually lucky to have the chance to fail at all of them.

I have a very low level of recognition, which is fine by me.

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 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'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.

You can laugh at somebody because they are innocent, and because they are naive or they are about to walk into a wall, but if somebody's giving you stuff, if somebody's talking, giving you their take on things, what makes you laugh, generally speaking, is going to be somebody who is telling it in an angry way.

When things are going well, I can't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. Writing walks, speech runs and talk flies. Other times, though, it's like fishing.

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.

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'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.

Nothing can make me feel better now, except cocaine."

Shame is one of the greatest aphrodisiacs in the world, anyway, built into religion.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The terror of failure can make you feel like a failure. So a bunch of people think you're not very good at your thing. How much do you invest in what they say? How much do you care? Failure is not putting yourself on the line.

I'm actually about as famous as a fourth division footballer from the 70s.

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.

I don't see teenagers anymore. I see... I see youths. Slumped S shapes in their hoodies, all huddled round a bin of burning grannies. All texting eachother because they've given up on speech.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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 relax here. These people have no pubic hair anywhere. We have pubic hair on the ceiling.

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'm not a fighter, I'm a bleeder.

I don't do drugs. If I want a rush I just get out of a chair when I'm not expecting it.

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

Don't clap I'm not a jazz band for Christ's sake

The trend now is to get away from stage bound sitcoms.

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)]

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

I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it.

I'd be hard-pressed to think of anybody who's made me laugh, who's funny, but who's also relentlessly positive.

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

I was lucky in the sense that I was never blessed with an overly reflective nature.

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

The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.

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

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

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!

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

I'm fascinated by how you'll change your position so many times over a lifetime, but really what you're doing is occupying a series of positions on a landscape.

I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you would gather around in the evening. It occupied a big part of your existence.

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 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.

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 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 not walk around imaging myself to be intimidating or smart.

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 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 don't watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when you're alone and someone's voice is coming through their work. There's a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.

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

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.

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.

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.

When I was a child, I wanted to watch things that made me laugh. It's attacking boredom, as simple as that. I was 19 when I first went to a comedy club - I wanted to do it, so I gave it a try and that was it. I found my office.

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.

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

Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written.

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.

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.

I wanted to show off - a simple impulse or drive; in much the same way as some kids wanted to play football, I wanted to show off. Not complicated in that sense, very natural; it just depends on how you want to show off.

Showing off seemed to me to be a highly valuable and necessary activity when I was 20.

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

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.

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

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...

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!

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'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.

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 love playing in America. I feel having been there a few times that I "get" America a lot more than I used to. It used to be so strange to me. It takes years to learn how to separate the actual, major, important differences from the superficial differences that aren't essential or crucial.

Nothing can make me feel better now, except cocaine.

I dislike both of [candidates] but there's obviously no choice in the election - if you're concerned about the future of anything, you need to vote for Hillary Clinton.

i don't mind most religious people. i talk to them. you know, i listen to them 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. i'd shoot him on sight, if he existed, which he doesn't. now have another bicky and be quiet, please.

I don't do drugs. If I want a rush I just stand up when I'm not expecting it.

[Washington] is the political capital. It's essentially a big office.

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.

I think of myself as a theatre comic instead of club comic because I tend to talk for a bit before I start being funny. I don't really do the one-liners and five second bits or whatever. But it's good to work stuff out sometimes.

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

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.

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

Of course people are angry. Generation upon generation had jobs at steel mills or whatever - things were going on and it looked like it would always be that way. And then there's these cataclysmic changes and people find themselves out on their arse and they're angry and they want answers. But one thing that's for sure is that those answers will not come in the form of Donald J. Trump.

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

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.

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