When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

- Brendan Behan

I am a drinker with writing problems.

- Brendan Behan

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

- 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

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

- Brendan Behan

I am a daylight atheist.

- Brendan Behan

It is a good deed to forget a poor joke.

- Brendan Behan

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.

- Brendan Behan

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

- Brendan Behan

If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.

- Brendan Behan

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

- Brendan Behan

I say myself no depressed words just depressed minds.

- Brendan Behan

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

- Brendan Behan

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

- Brendan Behan

No man can discover his own talents.

- Brendan Behan

I wish I'd been a mixed infant.

- 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

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

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

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

- Brendan Behan