115 Quotes by Brendan Behan

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can't do it themselves.

The English and Americans dislike only some" Irish - the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers - the ones that think.

I’m a drinker with a writing problem.

But the best book I ever saw in the nick was the Bible. When I was in Brixton on remand, I ’ad one in the flowery. Smashing thin paper for rolling dog-ends in. I must ’ave smoked my way through the book of Genesis, before I went to court.

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

I didn’t spend a lifetime studying theology, but I know that the Church was always against Ireland and for the British Empire.

He was a dark man, not very old, and very hard in an English way that tries to be dignified and a member of a master race that would burn a black man alive or put a pregnant woman out the side of the road in the interests of stern duty.

If I was willing to serve Mass, it was in memory of my ancestors standing around a rock, in a lonely glen, for fear of the landlords and their yeomen, or sneaking through a back-lane in Dublin, and giving the pass-word, to hear Mass in a slum public-house, when a priest’s head was worth five pounds and an Irish Catholic had no existence in law.

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.