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" I never really had a career, to be honest with you. I never in my life sat down and planned it. I have thought, 'Oh, I'd like to do this,' like anybody would. But I'm not the type that says, 'If I do this, it will lead to that.' "

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" A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention. "

Dylan Moran

People

Men

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" I really can't describe what my stand-up is like - people see it and they say it's like that, or it's like this, and that's really up to them, that's fine, but I don't sit around all day analysing it. I just try and enjoy a show and interest myself because if I don't do that then I won't interest anybody else. "

" I quite fancy the 1940s. I like the trams and the trousers. "

Dylan Moran

Trousers

Quite

" America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in. "

" I'm very drawn to Eastern Europe, so I like a Hungarian writer who wrote in French called Emil Cioran; he was always good for giving me such a stir. "

Dylan Moran

Giving

Writer

" You can't please everyone, nor should you seek to, because then you won't please anyone, least of all yourself. "

" You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up. "

" I think that women just have a primeval instinct to make soup, which they will try to foist on anybody who looks like a likely candidate. "

" I'm just a guy who happens to work in public from time to time. I've built a reputation as an established comic, not as a celebrity - a celebrity is someone who is famous but doesn't do anything. "

" The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty. "

" The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself. "

" It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book. "

" Children are the most honest critics. They will say 'You're funny', but also 'You're pathetic - go away.' "

" We are both drawn to surreal situations so the writing was a joy. "

" When things are going well, I can't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. Writing walks, speech runs and talk flies. Other times, though, it's like fishing. "

" I draw hundreds and hundreds of pictures of sort of gnarly looking men, so I don't know what that tells you. People who look like... they're waiting for a sandwich that's never going to come. I don't know what's wrong with me. "

Dylan Moran

Know

Looking

" I'm actually about as famous as a fourth division footballer from the 70s. "

" Do your own thing. Speak in your voice. "

" There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens. "

" I'd be hard-pressed to think of anybody who's made me laugh, who's funny, but who's also relentlessly positive. "

Dylan Moran

Made

Think

" I wouldn't be in a huge hurry to go back to Kansas. It was just bizarre. There's a lot of very, very heavy set people who believe in whatever they were told, because they didn't seem to get out very much or be interested in leaving where they were. They just didn't seem that curious, and I find that a little hard to deal with. "

" The truth is that I'm constitutionally incapable of doing an ordinary job. "

" I did throw a lot of eggs into one basket, as you do in your teenage years - 'I am buying these records, I am wearing this'. I did quite a bit of that. You have to do it, wear your stupid shoes, wear your stupid hair. "

" The terror of failure can make you feel like a failure. So a bunch of people think you're not very good at your thing. How much do you invest in what they say? How much do you care? Failure is not putting yourself on the line. "

" You're not going to learn anything if you're not prepared to go flat, so I'm very happy to go flat. "

Dylan Moran

Learn

Anything

" I suppose the best comedy shows do have the rock n' roll feeling - if it's a great night, and the roof is raised... yeah, it's a similar feeling, sure. "

" I'm not drunk onstage, although I've done that a couple of times when I was younger. It's partly just the way I talk - I talk like somebody in a rocking chair. I'm your 150-year-old grandmother. "

" I don't know that you're able to measure your aggregate wisdom as you go through life. I can't say that I ever feel that I'm sitting on top of a growing mound of wisdom. "

" I would never really analyse what I do. I leave that to other people - I'm not a critic. I just want to get on with whatever I have in hand, you know? Just try to make the best job of the available material. "

" Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing. "

Dylan Moran

Family

Job