Dylan Moran Quotes

I'm a writer. I'm not an actress.

My job is essentially that of an entertainer, no different to that of a musician, no different to that of an actor. I just happen to be an author.

I had a country upbringing in a predominantly Maori community, and that contrasted with a very multi-cultured arts community in the Aro Valley in Wellington: growing up around a lot of theatre and poets and writers and stuff.

I'm not too keen on jokes that are one-liners. I want the situation to be funny.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter.

I love good comedy. I don't like bad comedy.

I don't think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then.

I did stand-up. I loved George Carlin and Steve Martin.

I write almost everything, actually. Songs, poems, stories. And stories out of every genre, too.

When people asked me what I was going to do when I grow up, I always said, 'I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write screenplays. I'm going to write books. I'm going to write plays. That's what I'm going to do.'

Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.

I'm probably only going to make 10 movies, so I'm already planning on what I'm going to do after that. That's why I'm counting them. I have two more left. I want to stop at a certain point. What I want to do, basically, is I want to write novels, and I want to write theatre, and I want to direct theatre.

Writing is very much perceived as something distinct from performance. I don't see it like that.

We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.

I like jokes where people don't stop laughing.

I love doing stand up. I think it's a really worthwhile art form. It's so unique in all the things it combines, in terms of it being philosophizing, preaching, speaking truth to power and basic communicating. It's a good way to talk back to the world.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

It was the enchantment of spoken verse that led me to write for children.

I like listening to Garrison Keillor's 'The Writer's Almanac' with my daughter.

Ideally, I'd like to write poetry for public performances and prose for a different, more contemplative kind of consumption.

I'm not the greatest writer or the great rapper.

I'm not a writer; I'm not a novelist.

The older I get and the more iconic the piece, I believe that it's wise to watch a bit and become inspired and take moments that feel so connected to the story and also connected to me that I feel like I can make a part of my own performance.

The beauty of stand-up is that it's very flexible, it's very malleable and immediate. Whatever is in your head that day you can verbalise in some way that night. It's the medium that suits me best.