Brendan Behan Quotes

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

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

I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

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

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I am a drinker with writing problems.

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.

Whatever you hold in contempt is your jailer.

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

If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.

I ruined my health drinking to other people's.

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

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.

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

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

I am married to Beatrice Salkeld, a painter. We have no children, except me.

Every cripple has his own way of walking.