Dylan Moran on Time

"You're looking for a lump in a bag of lumps, that can take some time"

"Because their bones are growing, they can only sleep in certain positions, obviously. The crucifix and the swastika tend to be the most popular. Sometimes a combination of the two."

"When you say 'Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime!' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Lie down in the dark... for hours... and don't move... I'm locking the door now.'."

"People will kill you. Over time. They will shave out every last morsel of fun in you with little, harmless sounding phrases that people uses every day, like: "Be realistic!" You never hear someone go "Be realistic! Let me oil you."

"There's a guy, John Humphries, who does a lot of the interviews, and he sounds like he's been up since about midnight jogging on the spot to accuse people you've never heard of of lying. It's very aggressive right from the off. You turn it on and he goes: "DON'T LIE TO ME!! DON'T LIE TO ME! I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR 45 YEARS, WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM, A FUCKIN TURNIP?!" "WHERE ARE THE BOMBS? WHERE ARE THEY?!?!....Get up so I can kick you again, you lying fuck!"

"Young people, should be allowed to go up to one another and say “Hi” and that’s it – they go off and do something wonderfully stupid together...like have a gap year, there’s no other justification for that as far as I can see. What do young people have gap years for? They haven’t done anything yet! Why don’t they have a full year, where they do 9 times as much work as they’ve ever done in their life to prepare them for what the rest of adult hood feels like - which wandering around a desert, with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you."

"I got bored of the tedious conversations, talking to the dealer in a stairwell where you're not supposed to be, then going back to a depressing room and spending nine hours locked up going "eeerh", then going back to get more with what little money you have left."

"You hear people in restaurants competing with each other "I love you". "No, I love you". "Yeah, but I REALLY love you. I love pencils that you have sucked and thrown away ten years ago. I love your eyebrows and your ancestry and EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU! Just eat your food and let me love you, don't speak!" But what they don’t know, of course, at the time is that that dialogue is actually from a really bad science fiction film written by nature - really, what they're saying to one another is: "The race must continue, the race must continue! My vadudium is pointing at your phenungulator, the race must continue!"

"That's why the have the programmes presented by 45 guys; "Hi I'm Ted, I'm Bob, I'm Ralph, I'm Dick, I'm Dale, I'm Nick, I'm Will", and they keep changing all the angles of the camera. "I'm over here, I'm at this desk, I'm standing here" and Wendy comes up from under the desk with the financial weather."

"Everybody does that now. We all take pics… you do the same with holiday photos. You record something to look back on it, even though you’re not really there when you’re taking the picture ‘cause you’re too busy recording it; so you retrospectively go to look back on where you weren’t and tell yourself you had a good time."

"But you see, you measure what a good time you had by how much it fucks you up; you go out tonight, get ripped, get shitfaced. You'll wake up tomorrow and somebody will talk to you and ask, "How was last night?" You'll say, "It was fantastic! ...I can't see. No sens— no feeling, nothing, no sensation down the left side of my body. Oh! I can't even form sentences! You should've come; you would've at least lost an ear!"

"If somebody blocks you when you're walking, you're positively Edwardian in your manners. You do this sheepish little smile together, and you step aside. And you both do it at the same time, and you go "for goodness sake, what a to-do! Oh-ho-ho, dear me! I'll just eh, I'll just—oh, we did it again, can you believe it, I can't believe it! We should be on the stage! One more time, I'll just—oh, how did we ever get this far as a species!" But, for some reason, in a car, that becomes "YOU SPUNK BUCKET!".... from, you know, an eighty nine year-old church warden."

"Somewhere like Ireland, it's more hot-blooded, there's drama included in the fabric of every day, it's there every moment. People wake up going OH GOD! WHAT TIME IS IT?' 'It's six minutes to nine.' 'IS IT? I THOUGHT IT WAS ONLY SEVEN MINUTES TO, WE'RE ALL FUCKED! WHAT'S THE WEATHER LIKE?—DON'T TELL ME, I CAN'T BEAR TO HEAR, I'LL LOOK FOR MYSELF. AAAH! IT'S FIERCE MILD! WHAT ARE WE HAVING FOR BREAKFAST? ARE YOU GONNA DO THAT THING AGAIN WITH THE BREAD WHERE YOU PUT IT IN THE BOX AND BURN IT? WHOSE TROUSERS ARE THESE? COME ON, WE'LL BOTH TRY THEM AT ONCE AND SEE WHO WINS.' It's just more emotional at all times. For no real reason."

"Why would anybody want to go skiing ? You could sit in the comfort of you own kitchen and break your knees with a hammer. What is the human impulse ? What’s wrong with these people ? I think it’s because they’re so closeted, their lives are so comfortable, they actually seek out danger as a pastime. If you’re poor, you don’t go and look for danger ‘cause you’re surrounded by it. Your accommodation is dangerous, your neighbours are dangerous. Your own family are pretty handy. You probably have a couple of moves yourself. Your dinner can fucking kill you anyway so you don’t have to go and look for danger."

"Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California. There's a perfectly ordinary English sentence. How did that happen!? Do you know how that happened? 'Cause I'll tell you. Do you know how he got into that position? He got there... by lifting things. Now, you and me, we avoid lifting things; It's unpleasant. Especially heavy things. Even a five-year-old child knows this. He'll go "No, ha ha, fuck it, no, I'll go and stick Lego up my arse, I'm not doing that, no no." He took a different approach. He lifted the heavy- and you know, you lift something if you have to. Piano falls on granny, you lift the piano… 'cause Granny has mixed feelings about the whole situation. Sunday lunch continues. He didn't do any of that. He went over to the heavy thing, and lifted it, and put it back down and didn't move it anywhere... and then he did it again, hundreds of times, and he said to people who stopped to observe this aberrant behaviour, "Look how good I am... at lifting the heavy thing, in my underpants." Now that may seem a little dim. But it was they who said "You're the man. You're the one we want to deal with immigration, and water rates, and taxes, and all that kinda shit." But wait—what we need to know is, how bad was his predecessor at that job? This must've been someone who came to work covered in children's blood every morning."

"Chocolate bread! That's how they start the day. It's only going to escalate from there. By lunchtime you're fucking everybody you know. I was in Paris recently—they are very good at pleasure. I was walking by a bakery—a boulangerie, which is fun to go into and to say, even—and I went in, a childish desire to get a cake—"Give me one of those chocolate guys," I said—and I was talking to someone on the street, took a bite... I had to tell them to go away! This thing! I wanted to book a room with it! "Where are you from, what kind of music are you into? Come on!" Proper, serious pleasure. Because they know they're gonna die. Nobody goes to church. You think, we're gonna die, make a fucking nice cake."

"Or when people break up, they always use a bunch of lines on each other, you know, terrible rubbish lies, like "It’s not you, it’s me, it’s me." It’s NEVER you, it’s always them! You should level with these people! Tell them! "You know that strange sound you used to hear when you were going to sleep? That was me CHEWING the bed, out of sheer boredom! OOOOHH, How I HATE you, I hate you so much it gives me energy! I have to get up early in the morning to hate you because there isn’t time enough in the day. Please, GO AWAY!" Or that other BULLSHIT: "I need more space!" People never quantify exactly how much space they really need.. do they? But strangely enough, it always seems to be the exact same height, depth and breadth as you."

"Who sleeps, really? If you’re a proper adult person in the 21st century, how can you relax, at all? Your mind keeps churning. You think, "What if this thing happens?! What if that thing happens?! What if they happen together?! What if I lose my job?! I hate my fucking job! But what if I lose it?" Your mind is a hive of worms. And worms don't live in a hive, so it already feels unnatural. You lie in bed, beside your partner... "What if I died?!" If you don't have a partner, you just think, "What if I died? ...Okay, I would be dead." But if you do have a partner and family, you'd think, "What if I died? How would they cope?" They wouldn't! They would be out in the street in half an hour, stealing food from seagulls mouths! Or worse! They WOULD cope! They'd have a much nicer, cleaner house! And an improved sense of self-worth. Probably more money! And inevitably your partner would find somebody within the first 3-4 days, and begin a tumultuous sexual relationship. They would be having sex a lot in your bed when you were dead! The morning, the afternoon, the evening, and the night time would be the main times they would be having sex, in your bed, when you were dead. Feeding each other lobster with their bare hands, to give each other more energy to try it in new and more demanding ways. When your realise you are lying besides somebody who is waiting for you to die! And what's more, they're sleeping to make the time go faster."