One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.
— Brendan Behan
It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.
At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.
Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.
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.
If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.
Ah, bless you, Sister, may all your sons be bishops.
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.
I am a daylight atheist.
I say myself no depressed words just depressed minds.
I wish I'd been a mixed infant.
I am a drinker with writing problems.
New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of matress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as I ever tasted.
What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.
No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.
There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.
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 have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.
It is a good deed to forget a poor joke.
The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?
What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.
If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.
If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.
A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.
Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.
No man can discover his own talents.
A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.
