Behan Quotes & Sayings

The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you. — Brendan Behan

Pound notes are the best religion in the world. — Brendan Behan

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. — Brendan Behan

Whatever you hold in contempt is your jailer. — Brendan Behan

Come all you young rebels and list while I sing
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame
And it makes us all part of their pattriot game. — Dominic Behan

A man is fortunate if he encounters living examples of vice, as well as of virtue, to inspire him. — Brendan Behan

I never felt so much at home as I do in New York. I must be a devil. — Brendan Behan

I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not. — Brendan Behan

I think weddings are sadder than funerals, because they remind you of your own wedding. You can't be reminded of your own funeral because it hasn't happened. But weddings always make me cry. — Brendan Behan

There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic. — John Lennon

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less. — Brendan Behan

I am a drinker with writing problems. — Brendan Behan

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; 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. — Brendan Behan

There's no one, no one, loves you like yourself. — Brendan Behan

Scream at God if that's the only thing that will get results. — Brendan Behan

Every cripple has his own way of walking. — Brendan Behan

Nothing hurts more than the friendly letter that one never got around to writing. — Brendan Behan

Many a man has decided to stay alive not because of the will to live but because of the determination not to give assorted surviving bastards the satisfaction of his death. — Brendan Behan

It is a good deed to forget a poor joke. — Brendan Behan

God forgive us-but most of us grew up to be the sort of men our mothers warned us against. — Brendan Behan

Ninety-seven saint days a year wouldn't affect the theater, but two Yom Kippurs would ruin it. — Brendan Behan

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

You made one mistake. You married me. — Brendan Behan

I wish I'd been a mixed infant. — Brendan Behan

An author's first duty is to let down his country. — Brendan Behan

There's no bad publicity except an obituary. — Brendan Behan

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

That you, sister. May you be the mother of a bishop. — Brendan Behan

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in. — Brendan Behan

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

Message? What the hell do you think I am, a bloody postman? — Brendan Behan

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. — Brendan Behan

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

vacation, school starts again in September. I hate being late to my college classes, but I can't help it, and it has become a daily occurrence. Whether it's the dog needing to be let out and fed, Robert spilling breakfast on his shirt and having to change, the older girls having a fight, someone forgetting their homework, or bad traffic on the freeways - there is always something that seems to happen — Pam Behan

The sun was in mind to come out but having a look at the weather it was in lost heart and went back again. — Brendan Behan

I ruined my health drinking to other people's. — Brendan Behan

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. — Brendan Behan

The idea and experience of travel can mean many things: it involves movement of some kind, sometimes through unknown places, at other times just between home and the world. Journeys can also be inward, marking rites of passage or a growth into a new dimension. We travel in search of profit, pleasure or curiosity, to labour and survive, to flee from tyranny or sorrow, and into real and imagined utopias. — Teju Behan

I'm a Communist by day and a Catholic as soon as it gets dark. — Brendan Behan

Most horror movies are certainly that. — Brendan Behan

A general and a bit of shooting makes you forget your troubles ... it takes your mind off the cost of living. — Brendan Behan

I am a daylight atheist. — Brendan Behan

He was born an Englishman and remained one for years. — Brendan Behan

There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman. — Brendan Behan

They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues ... — 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. — Brendan Behan

You can't go wrong in choosing anything, and I love people who dodge all the gender-imperative rubbish that society torments us all with. I love the fact that he didn't think heterosexuality resolved anything at all, meaning, I assume, that he didn't think it was enough just to be heterosexual. You read him and you are immediately convinced that the rest of the world is suffering a mass mental illness. I love writers like that. — Morrissey

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

I saw a notice that said "Drink Canada Dry" and I've just started. — Brendan Behan

Failure at a task may be the result of having tackled it at the wrong time. — Brendan Behan

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

I'm a drinker with a writing problem. — Brendan Behan

No man can discover his own talents. — Brendan Behan

If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks. — Brendan Behan

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

Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself. — Brendan Behan

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb. — Brendan Behan

To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement. To get drunk was a victory. — Brendan Behan

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? — Brendan Behan

Ah, bless you, Sister, may all your sons be bishops. — Brendan Behan

The English and Americans dislike only some Irish
the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers
the ones that think. — Brendan Behan

A pedestrian ought to be legally allowed to toss at least one hand grenade at a motorist every day. — Brendan Behan

Prostitutes, more than any other profession, help keep American marriages together. — Brendan Behan

Write for love, edit for perfection & publish to share that moment in time — Debbie Behan

I cannot imagine any crime worse than taking a life, can you? -It'd depend whose life. — Brendan Behan

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough. — Brendan Behan

I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness — Frank O'Hara

I am married to Beatrice Salkeld, a painter. We have no children, except me. — Brendan Behan

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice. — Brendan Behan

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

The only thing I envy in young people is their livers. — Brendan Behan

When two men fight over a woman it's the fight they want, not the woman. — Brendan Behan

When I'm talking to people I like to stop and quote myself. My quotes have a way of spicing up conversation. — Brendan Behan

In a society which really supported marriage the wife would be encouraged to go to the office and make love to her husband on the company's time and with its blessing. — Brendan Behan

I'm a drinker with writing problems. — Brendan Behan