Brendan Behan on Anything and Everything

I drink to forget, but I can’t remember what.

I didn’t turn to drink. It turned to me.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

I lost my health drinking to other people’s.

I always know my capacity for alcohol, but I usually get sozzled before I reach it.

The only sort of man most women want to marry is a fellow with a will of his own – preferably made out in her favour.

An Anglo-Irishman only works at riding horses, drinking whiskey and reading double-meaning jokes at Trinity college.

The British are a gentle race – at least when you take away their guns, their kings and their queens.

I have a great admiration for the British people. No one else could have used Churchill so well during the war and then thrown him out at the right time afterwards.

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.

I have nothing against the church as long as they leave the drink alone.

Them that does all the talk about how nice it is in the next world, I don’t see them in any great hurry to get there.

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.