BRENDAN BEHAN

What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

I wish I'd been a mixed infant.

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

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

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

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.

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.

Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.

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.

If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.

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

I say myself no depressed words just depressed minds.

I am a daylight atheist.

No man can discover his own talents.

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?

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.

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 drinker with writing problems.

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.