Brendan Behan

"I would prefer bread and water in freedom to cake and wine in prison."

"The greatest poetry is often the simplest."

"Other men look at you. I look at your character."

"If you must fall in love, fall in love with someone who reads."

"I have infinite patience with the writer who is trying to say something."

"The problem with the world is too many people growing up."

"A man without a past is a man without a future."

"The worst disease is not cancer or tuberculosis but hopelessness."

"I never liked the English, even as a child."

"To survive you must tell stories."

"I never saw a situation that couldn't be made worse by the presence of a policeman."

"The world will break your heart."

"I am a daylight atheist and a midnight believer."

"Drink is the curse of the working classes and the blessing of the Irish."

"Some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple."

"I have one rule: never believe a man who smells of righteousness."

"The trouble with Ireland is that it's full of Irish."

"A writer's job is to tell the truth as he sees it."

"I would like to think I was a good person, but I'm sure I wasn't."

"Pain is the price of passion."

"The only thing worse than a critic is a successful critic."

"I'd rather be a bad poet than a good businessman."

"To be Irish and not a little mad is impossible."

"Every day I wake up is a day I've beaten death."

"The secret to living well is not in the having but in the becoming."

"I have nothing but contempt for someone who does not believe in their own work."

"A real friend will stab you in the front, not the back."

"The question is not whether you will fall, but whether you will get up."

"I believe in nothing but I have faith in everything."

"Money is not the root of all evil—indifference is."