Top 206 Quotes & Sayings by Dylan Moran - Page 2

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.

Have I had therapy? I went to a yoga class once.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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'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 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.

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.

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 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.

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'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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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'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.

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

Nothing can make me feel better now, except cocaine.

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

I'm a vegetarian, well I'm not hardcore because I eat meat, but only because I like the taste, and I hate vegetables on a personal level so I'm not too good!

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.

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.

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!

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

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 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?

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.

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.

Its not easy being a man you know. I had to get dressed today… and there are other pressures.

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.

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

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.

Women are like canoes, full of soup. At first everyone is suspicious but then everyone wants one.

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.

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?"

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!

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!

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.

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

I find it incredibly boring when people are mean about some individuals, especially if the individual has no power. I can understand how someone deems it necessary if somebody is in power to tear them down - I think that's really crucial. I make a lot of mean jokes about myself; as a theme, suffering seems to me a very interesting thing for comedy, but not the suffering of a particular individual.

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 can see desperation in people who are too eager to laugh because they're in such a hurry not to look at what's confronting them in their lives and that's kind of sad because there's a kind of pornographic aspect to it, of making some sort of pain go away, of hovering around a pain, making yourself numb, not feel anything.

I'm a quitter. I come from a long line of quitters. It's amazing I'm here at all.

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

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.

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