Graham Linehan Quotes

I'm just a loud Irish guy.

In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation. Imagined worlds can lodge deeply in the private sphere, dislodging much else, especially when the public sphere is fragile.

Americans just don't understand dry wit.

I'm an Irish-American, and I grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood.

I'm Irish, so I'm messing all the time. Which means, I'm having a laugh. I'm always making jokes.

Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite.

There's a real mischievousness about Irishmen, don't you find?

But let's just say, I'm Irish. I grew up in the 1950s. Religion had a very tight iron fist.

Show me an Irishman who can't tell a story - I don't think they exist.

The fact is that most 'Irish-Americans', in spite of dropping the word 'Irish' into half of all sentences, couldn't find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland.

Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it.

I'm Irish. I don't know how to take a compliment.

American and French culture are really, really different, but in a way it's funny.

Language is so important to the Irish, almost regardless of education.

The Irishman in English literature may be said to have been born with an apology in his mouth.

Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.

If a stranger taps you on the ass and says, "How's the little lady today!" you will probably cringe. But if he's an American, he's only being friendly.

At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everything

The Irish are people who will never have leaders, for at the great moment they always desert them. They have produced one skeleton--Parnell--never a man.

[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.

In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile; on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility.

The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol - brighter than my students at university.

We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it--that makes no sense. What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.” -Mrs. Karafilis

In Europe they're more calm, more reserved. Here, in the States, people are more wild, a little more open. I guess it takes a lot to impress those people up there in Europe. Especially in London.

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.