Connolly Quotes & Sayings

It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential. — Cyril Connolly

A woman's mind is as complex as the contents of her handbag; even when you get to the bottom of it, there is ALWAYS something at the bottom to surprise you! — Billy Connolly

Most criminals were dumb, and he took the view that the whole science of criminology was essentially flawed, since much of its theory was based on the study of criminals who had been caught, and were therefore either stupid or unlucky, as opposed to the study of those who had not been caught, and were therefore smart and had a little luck on their side, but just a little. Luck ran out, but smart was for life. — John Connolly

I read somewhere that the New Orleans citizenry bought fewer copies of the New York Times than any other city in the United States, although they made up for it by buying more formal wear than anywhere else. If you're going out to formal dinners every evening, you don't get much time to read the New York Times. — John Connolly

A job, in their view, was a job, and, as with most jobs, you just had to find that perfect balance between doing as little as possible so you didn't get tired, and just enough so that you didn't get fired. — John Connolly

Why is there always one bloke in these boy bands who looks like he came to fix the boiler and somehow got bullied into joining the group? — John Connolly

James Van Der Beek and I go way back. We were in the movie 'Angus' together in 1994 or 1995, so I've known him for a million years. — Kevin Connolly

He had never really speculated about this before, since demons came in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, some of them came in more than one shape or size all by themselves, such as O'Dear, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Overweight, and his twin, O'Really, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Slim When They're Not. — John Connolly

It is a curious fact that small boys are more terrified of their babysitters than small girls are. In part, this is because small girls and babysitters, who are usually slightly larger girls, belong to the same species, and therefore understand each other. Small boys, on the other hand, do not understand girls, and therefore being looked after by one is a little like a hamster being looked after by a shark. If you are a small boy, it may be some consolation to you to know that even large boys do not understand girls, and girls, by and large, do not understand boys. This makes adult life very interesting. — John Connolly

And I knew, too, that to live a life like Walter Cole's - a life almost mundane in the pleasure it derived from small happinesses and the beauty of the familiar, but uncommon in the value it attached to them - was something to be envied. — John Connolly

,000 people in Hampden Park. Of course they're all Scottish. Because no one else goes there. The English have an unwritten rule: they only go to places they might get back from. — Billy Connolly

All presented one face to the world, and kept another hidden. Nobody could survive in it otherwise. — John Connolly

And we took off-whoosh-into the night. Through the clouds, we hurtled up into the sky. And this man farted. I will never forget it as long as I live. Not only was it the worst fart, it was the longest. Maybe, it was the position he was in, he had squeezed his ass all up. But he was kinda leanin over and pointing his ass up toward me. And it made the strangest noise. It was like cloth tearing. — Billy Connolly

I'm not just saying this because I'm in the movie, but I really would recommend 'Secretariat.' It's fun, inspiring, and it's a great movie to take your little kids, brothers, sisters, or nieces and nephews to see that actually has real people in it and not animated characters. — Kevin Connolly

Was that his name? I never had a chance to ask. He was too intent upon tearing out my throat for us to engage in idle chitchat. — John Connolly

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933] — Cyril Connolly

The Islanders and their owner, Garth Snow, were very generous with me and let me do some cool stuff inside the organization. — Kevin Connolly

After all, no relationship could function or survive under the burden of total honesty. — John Connolly

Once you become successful, people know where you live, the type of house you live in, the kind of car you drive, the clothes you wear, and so it would be patronising to go and talk like a welder. Welding's a mystery to me now. You can't go back, your life changes every day. — Billy Connolly

Anyone who wants bookstores to survive is portrayed as a Luddite who goes around smashing up Kindles. — John Connolly

Nowadays, if you have a mustache, people look at you like you're crazy. But when I was growing up, I never saw my dad without a mustache. — Kevin Connolly

Ally MacLeod thinks that tactics are a new kind of mint. — Billy Connolly

This life is filled with threats and danger, David. We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for the greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. There is no glory in throwing it away where there is no hope. — John Connolly

We're the world's leading producer of serial killers. It's a sign of sickness, is what it is. We're sick and weak and these killers are like a cancer inside us: the faster we grow, the quicker they multiply. — John Connolly

If 'why' was the first and last question, then 'because I was curious to see what would happen' was the first and last answer. A version of it had been spoken to God Himself in the Garden of Eden, and it was destined to be the reason for the end of things at the hands of man. — John Connolly

In Mexico, everything on the menu is the same dish. The only difference is the way it's folded. — Billy Connolly

In the end, you have to let things go. The things you regret are the things you hold on to. — John Connolly

What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers. — John Connolly

The Irish people will only be free, when they own everything from the plough to the stars — James Connolly

All these mountains of Irish dead, all these corpses mangled beyond recognition, all these arms, legs, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, hands, all these shivering putrefying bodies and portions of bodies once warm living and tender parts of Irish men and youths - all these horrors in Flanders or the Gallipoli Peninsula, are all items in the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire. — James Connolly

What I always tell people is ... Unless you are so passionate about filmmaking that you would rather live out of your car than not do it, find something else to do as a career and do filmmaking as a hobby. This industry is one of the hardest to break into and be successful. It takes a lot of passion and dedication for it to get anywhere ... — Ryan Connolly

I am out of money,we are all out of money,but we dont need money down here- Dont need anything but Men , Muskets, Ammunition, Hard Tack, Bacon and Letters from home. — James A. Connolly

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you. — Cyril Connolly

The Crooked Man believed that whatever evil lay in men was there from the moment of their conception, and it was only a matter of discovering its nature in a child. — John Connolly

He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind. — John Connolly

The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one."
"Don't vote. It just encourages them ... — Billy Connolly

Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence. — Cyril Connolly

We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal). — John Connolly

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality. — Cyril Connolly

But don't they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere."
"'They?' Who are 'they?'"
"I don't know. Just people."
"That's what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless. 'All is fair.' 'The end justifies the means.' Is that what you believe? — John Connolly

She was night without the promise of dawn, darkness without light. — John Connolly

I'm proud of where I'm from. I'm proud of Long Island. — Kevin Connolly

Teaching people the best way to market organically with Facebook, is like teaching them the best way to butter bread, with a spoon. — Jim Connolly

Youth is a period of missed opportunities. — Cyril Connolly

Paunch lapping at his belt like a pale tongue, peeping out from beneath the fabric of his golf shirt, hairy and somehow obscene. He was — John Connolly

Avoid people who say they know the answer. Keep the company of people who are trying to understand the question. — Billy Connolly

Contentment is a very underrated feeling, but you only learn that as you get older, and with it comes regret that it took you so long to realize what you'd been missing. — John Connolly

was extraordinarily unhandsome, as though God had created the ugliest human being possible and then punched him in the face. — John Connolly

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. — Cyril Connolly

Why do ants alone have parasites whose intoxicating moistures they drink and for whom they will sacrifice even their young? Because as they are the most highly socialized of insects, so their lives are the most intolerable. — Cyril Connolly

I don't like the beach. I think we have no business at the beach at all, as a species. We don't belong in the sea. The sea is full of things that bite us, sting us, hurt the soles of our feet, and it's extremely cold. When are we gonna take the hint that the things that live in the sea don't like us? — Billy Connolly

Are you sizeist? — John Connolly

I think most people are afraid of what they don't know. — Kevin Connolly

Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them. — Cyril Connolly

Luck ran out, but smart was for life. — John Connolly

Life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life. Get wasted all the time, and you'll have the time of your life! — Billy Connolly

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life. — Cyril Connolly

I had met plain women, even ugly women, whose physical shortcomings had been remedied by the spirit within, their decency and kindness even effecting a kind of transformation upon them, softening the bluntness of their features. This was not such a woman. The blight was inside her, and no restyling of her hair, no careful use of cosmetics, no pretty dresses could have made her any less unsettling than she was. — John Connolly

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post. — Cyril Connolly

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us. — Cyril Connolly

One of the detectives was later heard to comment that Perry Reed was officially in more trouble than any other single human being he'd ever encountered in the course of his entire career.... — John Connolly

Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he THINK he was doing at the time? — Billy Connolly

For a moment they still lived and I experienced their deaths as a fresh loss with each waking, so that I was unsure whether I was a man waking from a dream of death or a dreamer entering a world of loss, a man dreaming of unhappiness or a man waking to grief. — John Connolly

Where do you go when you die? The same place you were before you were born; nowhere! It's over! — Billy Connolly

Knew that his God - for each man has his own God - let him wander there sometimes, perhaps with the ghost of one of the many dogs that had kept him company through his life yapping at his heels, flushing the birds from the rushes and chasing them for the joy of it. My grandfather used to say that if God did not allow a — John Connolly

We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for a greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. — John Connolly

The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted. — Cyril Connolly

Someone - Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? - once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable. — Joseph Epstein

I live in L.A. and love L.A., and you couldn't drag me out of there kicking and screaming. — Kevin Connolly

The Irish Republic must be made a word to conjure with - a rallying point for the disaffected, a haven for the oppressed, a point of departure for the socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom. — James Connolly

It's a lot of work that goes into producing and directing and all those kinds of things. It doesn't just happen. It's a lotta work. It's a lot more work than acting. — Kevin Connolly

I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place. — Billy Connolly

They were the clothes of a child, and he was a child no longer. — John Connolly

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? — Cyril Connolly

So what you gonna do?"

"Push a stick into the beehive and rustle up some bees. The Larousses are hosting a party today. I think we should avail ourselves of their hospitality."

"We got an invite?"

"Has not having one ever stopped us before?"

"No, but sometimes I just like to be invited to shit, you know what I'm sayin', instead of havin' to bust in, get threatened, irritate the nice white folks, put the fear of the black man on them."

He paused, seemed to think for a while about what he had just said, then brightened.

"Sounds good, doesn't it?" I said.

"Real good," he agreed. — John Connolly

I don't understand art-speak. My pictures are big doodles. I'm amazed what people come up with when they look at them. There's one of a figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony. None of it is a comment on anything. — Billy Connolly

Scotland has the only football team in the world that does a lap of disgrace. — Billy Connolly

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow. — Cyril Connolly

If you don't know how to meditate at least try to spend some time every day just sitting. — Billy Connolly

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

No, all that David could think about was the head of the deer-girl, for her face rubbed against his as they rode, her warm blood smeared his cheek, and he saw himself reflected in the dark green mirrors of her eyes. — John Connolly

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion. — Cyril Connolly

You can't have what you want to have, without doing what you need to do. — Jim Connolly

David tried to give a form to the beast at the heart of the poem but found that he could not. It was more difficult than it appeared, for nothing quite seemed to fit. Instead, he could only conjure up a half-formed being that crouched in the cobwebbed corners of his imagination where all the things that he feared curled and slithered upon one another in the darkness. — John Connolly

We haunt ourselves, I sometimes think; or, rather, we choose to be haunted. If there is a hole in our lives, then something will fill it. We invite it inside, and it accepts willingly. — John Connolly

Every individual spends a lifetime trying to disprove Copernicus by placing him- or herself at the heart of existence, but a small core of diehards manages to turn it into an art. — John Connolly

It's odd, but people are capable of forgetting quite extraordinary occurrences very quickly if it makes them happier to do so, — John Connolly

He had quite liked the dwarfs. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun. — John Connolly

The artist secretes nostalgia around life. — Cyril Connolly

You must be careful where you step.
And you must be ready for what you might find. — John Connolly

Names did have a power, if they were used in the right way. — John Connolly

In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together. — Cyril Connolly

I don't aim to offend. — Billy Connolly

As soon as I got successful, the Scottish press started picking on me. It's something they reserve just for me. — Billy Connolly

You had to be reasonably wealthy and privileged to choose not to own stuff. He — John Connolly

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be satisfied. — Cyril Connolly

Is it possible to love any human being without being torn limb from limb? — Cyril Connolly

He had loved her as much as a man can love his wife, and so nothing more need be said. — John Connolly

Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual. — Cyril Connolly

For me, it's about the desire to win. My audience becomes a crowd of wild animals and I have to be the lion-tamer or be eaten. — Billy Connolly