Billy Connolly Quotes - Page 4

My parents used to take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.

I don't believe in angels, no. But I do have a wee parking angel. It's on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it's supposed to give you a parking space. It's worked so far.

Don't buy one of those baby intercoms. Babies pretend to be dead. They're bastards, and they do it on purpose.

[To audience members who were arriving late] You haven't missed a thing, I was just killing time 'til you got here.

I’ve come in and out of America for… well, I’ve lived here for 15 years. And I’ve played here for nearly 30 years. On and off. But I’ve always played to my fan base. And I can come and do two or three nights in New York or two or three nights in L.A., and all that. But when I go away, nobody knows I’ve been gone. You know, I don’t get reviewed or anything like that. So that’s why I’ve come back and done a longer time in a smaller place, in New York. It’s always the people who live here that get a chance to know me.

I'd always been scared of people with tertiary education and high intellects in case they found me wanting. I thought they viewed me as just a welder who knew a few jokes.

For me, it's about the desire to win. My audience becomes a crowd of wild animals and I have to be the lion-tamer or be eaten.

A lot of people are too easily offended. Religious people, for instance. They've been offending other people for centuries.

I think the longer Britain is in Europe the better.

American sex shops are the most bizarre. They sell these inflatable dolls, but they also sell just the head -- supposedly for people to drive along the highway with.

Oh aye...my Father would thrash me every now and then. He'd talk while he did it too! He'd hit me and shout, 'Have ye had enough?' Had enough? Whit kind of question is that? 'Why, Father, would another kick in the balls be out of the question???'

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.

,000 people in Hampden Park. Of course they're all Scottish. Because no one else goes there. The English have an unwritten rule: they only go to places they might get back from.

I spent the whole time battering people I liked and singing with my arm round people I loathed.

Revolution was written into the U.S. Constitution so it's like they're in a constant state of revolution. But then again, happiness is written into their constitution as well, which makes them pretty unique.

Now, the country is in a terrible state, and you've blamed it on a number of things: Unemployment rate, the value of the pound and all that... wrll, it's because the national anthem is boring.

I'm one of the school of people who don't do research of the reality of the thing or the unreality of the thing. In all the movies I've done, I've never done any research.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

I can't believe in Christianity, but I think Jesus was a wonderful teacher.

Nothing means anything here. When they pull down an outstanding building, no one objects. Oh, maybe there's a wee protest from some collectors or something who take a picture of it before it vanishes.

Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about?

I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless.

I still do my comedy and my performance stuff and my acting so it's not all-consuming. But I do find myself drawing more and more these days.

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.