Dylan Moran
Irish comedian, actor, and writer, best known for his work in Black Books.
That’s why adults are confused a lot of the time. Adults are terribly confused, messed up people. That’s because they forget, really, that they don’t have to pretend all the time. Really, the fact is that you’re not an adult at all - you’re just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don’t understand… "The Middle East? Yeah, I know it was really bad. I wouldn’t have done that. A hysterectomy? Yeah, very painful, the shoulder is a very painful area."
Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California. There's a perfectly ordinary English sentence. How did that happen!? Do you know how that happened? 'Cause I'll tell you. Do you know how he got into that position? He got there... by lifting things. Now, you and me, we avoid lifting things; It's unpleasant. Especially heavy things. Even a five-year-old child knows this. He'll go "No, ha ha, fuck it, no, I'll go and stick Lego up my arse, I'm not doing that, no no." He took a different approach. He lifted the heavy- and you know, you lift something if you have to. Piano falls on granny, you lift the piano… 'cause Granny has mixed feelings about the whole situation. Sunday lunch continues. He didn't do any of that. He went over to the heavy thing, and lifted it, and put it back down and didn't move it anywhere... and then he did it again, hundreds of times, and he said to people who stopped to observe this aberrant behaviour, "Look how good I am... at lifting the heavy thing, in my underpants." Now that may seem a little dim. But it was they who said "You're the man. You're the one we want to deal with immigration, and water rates, and taxes, and all that kinda shit." But wait—what we need to know is, how bad was his predecessor at that job? This must've been someone who came to work covered in children's blood every morning.
Men don’t know anything! Men don’t know when their lives became so entirely awful, when everyone else turned into such a tosser! A man does not know how he came by the half a pie he is holding in his hand. And scientists—those frauds—seize on this, and try to use it as proof of the mysteries of human consciousness and the unknowable nature of the brain, which is rubbish! The brain is the simplest organ in the body. It only has three bits. There’s the front bit, which is the bit you scratch when you come in at half one in the morning, and the person you live with says, “Where the fuck were you?”. The middle bit, which tries to come up with the excuse. And the back bit, which plays the last song that was on in the pub.
This is from my granny. She was a beautiful, spiritual person. She always used to say: "Doesn't matter how big the fucker is. They all have a neck." Another thing she used to say was: "Never get involved with more than 11 people sexually at one time. You cannot keep everybody happy. Work on the farm deteriorates almost immediately. Don’t do that."
Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is why it's not a great religion. All great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.
We need to believe something, and you’re not allowed to believe in religion… Well, you can, but people will laugh at you and throw things. ‘Cause it was just sort of decided in the 20th century that religion is basically a formalized panic about death. Look at the Catholic church, the campest organization on the planet with the purple robes, gold bits on the side, jewellery so big if they let it fall it would kill people... What else can it be, but this sort of ritual of panic about death? “DEATH IS COMING! Quick, put on the gold hat!”
You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!
NEVER try the local thing. You know why it's local? Because it's shit, that's why it's local. You eat it, you'll become one of them, you'll turn red and start spouting bigotry and eating tweed with lamb fat dribbling down your chin, don't go near any of that stuff.
If you are going to have an afterlife, why not just have a physical afterlife? Just come back as a tentacle with a set of lips looking for huge lumps of chocolate to fuck, it'd be much more reasonable.
Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!
You see, people never really grow up. 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? But you can absolutely understand the desire to believe in something, to support you. Children like to be supervised by adults. That’s why children go, “look, no hands” or “look, I can do this” or “I’m really good at this”. Whatever it is. Because it validates them, it shows them that they are there, that somebody else is watching over them. Grown-ups are the same, not that there is any such thing as a grown-up, really. They liked to be watched by something. Because the planet’s not gonna miss us, when we’ve finished fucking it up and killing each other. So we needed the idea of God to have somebody to miss us, or at least notice that we weren’t there anymore.
The belief system that if you smiled hard enough into the face of God, you would eventually shit money.
My ideal body, you know, would be just probably something like, ahm... One eye, you probably only need one. A kind of sucker thing instead of teeth, because they just give you grief in the end, you know. And a long, long tube with my arse way over there so I don't have to deal with it. That would be ideal.
Do you know how fat you are, do you? No, you don't, 'CAUSE YOUR FACE IS AN ISLAND TRAPPED IN A SEA OF FLAB! I would stab you to death... but I can't afford to take the two weeks off work!
Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics... and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what- there's a shortage, and... it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother... right about now... yeah... it's the, it's the funk soul brother... check it out. It's, er, well... it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the... well... it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited - maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say - but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying.
99,9% of men are convinced that they have to live silently, with a bitter irony of the twist of fate, that means, nobody knows they're really a spy. And an amazing guitarist. Men give serious time and thought on "How would I deal with, if the rocket came down of that alley right now? Yeah, I'd handle that situation pretty well!". A spy who plays guitar at night! I basiclly think, you know, I'm what would have happened if James Dean had lived and discovered carbohydrates and orthopaedic shoes. You have to tell yourself this bullshit just to keep going! Cause you're constantly being reminded how redundant you are!
This is our smeg fridge, the whole house is smeg, we're made of smeg, aren't we, Roy?
There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There’s the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that’s ok, can we get 8 of those please, give us 8 of those." There’s the other one, you know, where you go "Ga…bt…jesus, WHAT is that?" Very, very occasionally I concede you will hit a subtle one. You know, where you go "Ga…ba…ah, actually that’s not that bad, that is. It’s quite nice."
It should not be an act of social disobedience to light a cigarette... unless you're actually a doctor working at an incubator.