Atheists

"The most dangerous drink is gin. You have to be really, really careful with that. And you also have to be 45, female and sitting on the stairs. Because gin isn't really a drink, it's more a mascara thinner. "Nobody likes my shoes!" "I made... I made fifty... fucking vol-au-vents, and not one of you... not one of you... said 'Thank you.'" And my favourite: "Everybody, shut up. Shut up! This song is all about me.""

"It turns you into two people: one of you's very nice, you'll go up to total strangers and say, "Come in, come in, sit down, for God's sake, have something. Have my bed." And then you'll go up to people you've known and loved all your life and say, "Get the fuck out of my house! Go on, get out! And leave a tip!""

"Vodka is a very deceptive drink, because you drink it and you think, "What is this? This is pointless! It's— you can't taste it, you can't smell it... Why did we waste our money on this, bloody— why are we on a traffic island?""

"There are two types of wine essentially, and everybody knows this. There’s the one where you drink it and go, "Mmmm, well that’s ok, can we get 8 of those please, give us 8 of those." There’s the other one, you know, where you go "Ga…bt…jesus, WHAT is that?" Very, very occasionally I concede you will hit a subtle one. You know, where you go "Ga…ba…ah, actually that’s not that bad, that is. It’s quite nice.""

"I Know. I Know! Let's Go Potholing! In Croatia!" "Fine. I know a guy who can give us a lift... Me!"

"It should not be an act of social disobedience to light a cigarette... unless you're actually a doctor working at an incubator."

"Beer must be made by food companies. It makes you wander the streets at 3 am looking for things to eat. "What's that, is it moving, get it!! It's a nun! FRY HER!! FRY HER!""

"EGGS! They're not a food, they belong in no group! They're just farts clothed in substance!"

"People do... need... things... that are bad for them. They do. Stimulants and so on. They always have. Every so often, some politician or footballer or actor or whoever it is is caught in a hotel room, surrounded by hookers and cocaine. And everybody else goes: "Oh, the shame of it! How could he? How absolutely dreadful! I'd never do that... I've never had a chance, but I'd never ever do that! Oh, the disgust that courses through me right now — you could bottle it!" But what else are you supposed to give hookers in a hotel room? "Yogurt, anybody? I made some yogurt this morning, would you like some? It's got Granola and everything. You sure? Go on, have a bit.""

"You see the button with the picture of the guy with the plate, and you push it, AND HE ARRIVES WITH A SANDWICH! ...And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land. It's my Wizard-Of-Oz phone.""

"I don't bother with drugs myself 'cause I'm at that age now; I don't need to. If I want a rush, I just get out of a chair when I don't expect it. Forget to give yourself a couple of days notice before you tie your shoes. Whoosh! What a rush!"

"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!""

"I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust, key stuff, a perilous loss."

"(after coughing) Excuse me. I have a touch of everything."

"(after coughing) I have... something. It'll clear up. Might take me with it, but we'll see."

"(after coughing) ...and then you cough and die."

"I'm waiting 'til they get all this kit in one six by three inch lump of metal and you just stick it up your arse and it does everything for you. You get music all the time, everything's in vivid colour, your taste and all your hearing is enhanced, and you never have to do anything ever again. You can stay in bed and just live in this vortex of sensation."

"You're a wonderful lover."

"I apologise for even bringing this up, but it is two thousand and something, whatever it is, and it is still very difficult to have a rational conversation about periods.. to a woman.. when it could be relevant. You see I’m almost instinctively euphemistic about it, I don’t want to get into trouble even here! I only realised recently I’ve been having the same kind of polite conversation all my life, where you say to somebody: “..Hmm?.. You don’t - you don’t want to go to the restaurant, that we said we’d..? No, me neither. And you don’t want to go to the other place I’m about to suggest- me neither! Or any of the places I can think of, I hate them all as well. But listen, the thing is, when we do find somewhere, and I’m sure we will cause you’re starving, I know that, you’ve said it several times; when we get there, I’m actually not that worried about food myself. Main thing for me is, when we get in there, could you run over some of my flaws? Cause you know, I just can’t keep track! I don’t know what it is, if you weren’t here, really I’d be fucked, I really would.” I don’t do that shit anymore. I just say: “Listen, listen.. Are you having your period? Cause you know what, it’s humiliating to argue with a hormone. And I know you’re crying and everything, but you know what, I quite fancy a cry too, I really do. You’ve kind of stolen the show and the waiter’s coming over now but I really would like to cry as well. By the way, crying isn’t proof of a greater capacity to feel, it’s proof of a greater capacity to cry. And I’m not paying for this, fuck you.”"

""Shut up, you wretch! I rescued you from the city streets. Without me you'd still be fucking bouncing into buildings out there in the laser neon rain with the tabloids poltergeisting through the air, wondering where the fuck you are, you clueless dolt! I took you in for the waif you were, rescued you from every doorway which was a waiting set of jaws—every half-closed window, a pirate's eye—I took you in and rescued you from your own stupidity! If you had a shred of moral decency, you'd chain yourself to the radiator and devote the rest of your life to acts of sexual abasement!" But you don't say that. You say "Yes, I see what you mean, I see where you're coming from"."

"Hi, how are you today? I'm Tony, I'm going to be your server. I've got some very exciting specials to tell you folks about right here. We've got our deep-pan re-re-fried chocolate ice cream pizza, which comes with a complementary pacemaker. If you're watching your weight you might want to try our No Hope Protein Salad, absolutely delicious. Philippe, our maitre d', will dig out some photographs of you looking kind of tubby, you know, on the Internet, and then we all kind of point and laugh at you and just sort of rub a single chickpea on your lip until you cry. Would you like some water?"

"It's a totally inhospitable place, you shouldn't be here—the sun—you live about three quarters of a mile from it; I've seen insects walking around with kneepads; you fling yourselves into the sea when you're not actually walking around audibly crackling in the heat. And the sea is full of jellyfish, sharks and other things who hate you, but you persist in living here. So you know, it's a jail you live in. It's lovely, you've done wonderful things with it, but you're all still in denial."

"This is from my granny. She was a beautiful, spiritual person. She always used to say: "Doesn't matter how big the fucker is. They all have a neck." Another thing she used to say was: "Never get involved with more than 11 people sexually at one time. You cannot keep everybody happy. Work on the farm deteriorates almost immediately. Don’t do that.""

"Now, The Archers is not a programme I’m hugely familiar with, because every time the theme music comes on, I leap across the kitchen with an athleticism I don’t actually possess, in search of the “fuck off” button on the radio. I gather it’s about some people who are very, very worried about getting the crisps to the fete on time. No wonder everybody's hooked."

"Why would anybody want to go skiing? You could sit in the comfort of your 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."

"The dark creates all kinds of things. The dark creates music, particular kinds of music. Horrible folk music you don't want to listen to. And heavy metal which they love in dark places. They love it in Scandinavia. They have all these metal bands, you know? And they're not like the English ones or American ones that have names like Metallica and Megadeth and so on. The names are... 'Cause English isn't their first language in Scandinavia even though they all speak it. So they call their bands things like Anus Hammer, Egg Smuggler, all that stuff. lt's a very interesting look, heavy metal, you know... You have everything down here. You've got jazz and ska and everything, you know. Whatever, folk music, too, probably. Folk music has its own look. lt has a... You know, people wear dungarees 'cause they say, "l'm a man or a woman of the people. This isn't my main thing, you know. l'm just like you really. My main job is harvesting turnips. Anyway, this next number is called Cross-eyed Mary of the Lowlands. l'd like to dedicate it to my wife." And then there's jazz, you know, where you get people in suits but they're non-conformist suits 'cause they're wearing a pink shirt with a green jacket and a blue tie and trousers too complex to describe. 'Cause they're saying, "Yes, l'm wearing a suit but l work for me. And my job is to play the electrified tractor horn till 5:00 in the morning, so fuck you." Heavy metal is a very interesting look. The look is a kind of an argument. lt's an argument against Darwinism. Because what the people who are involved are saying, is that attraction is not necessary for reproduction. That's why they shave all the hair off where it would naturally be and cultivate it in places it shouldn't be. And that's why the music is so angry. You know, if you shave all the hair off your arse and get into a pair of leather trousers, you're gonna sing an angry song. lt's not gonna be some wistful ballad about that crazy summer in Paris with Justine. lt's going to be much more, "Death in the morning, death for breakfast. Little pots of toasted death." Heavy metal is what happens when a group of people with competitively disgusting appearances come together to try to kill air. No, partly... Partly, that is probably age speaking. l just can’t tolerate certain things, you know."

"What does anyone think or believe any more? Belief itself is treated with disgust. Belief is now regarded as a kind of fat marbling the brain. Who here believes in organized religion? (NO!) Who doesn't? (AUDIENCE CHEERING LOUDLY) You see? People in the West don't believe in anything! And we're proud of it! "What you believe in?" "Nothing! Nothing!" "What did you have for lunch? I don't fucking believe you!" We don't believe in anything. We treat religion with contempt. Faith. All that rubbish. What are you, a child? Believing in this, you do good and then you know, you die and then you get a biscuit! What are you, a fucking idiot? What's wrong with you? We don't believe in anything! Because we know about science! Believe in science! That's the only thing we know about! The atoms and quarks and things. We don't understand it! Any of it! But... But that's the case. So, that's totally different to having a faith! Isn't it?"

"They tell you, you can get everything you need from pulses and lentils and things like that. Yeah. Everything you need, except company, which is not to be had, because you are dying, bent double in a miasma of your own toxic farts."

"You know what you think, you know where you are on the spectrum... You’re Left or you’re Right really, that’s it. And if you’re left-wing, you’re boring. That’s the truth. Nobody wants to hang around with you, you’re very dull. You’re the voice of conscience, y’know the one saying: “Now look. Put it down, we should all be nice to one another. Let’s try and not eat everything today.” Very dull voice... The right-wing... Cruel? Yes. Vicious? Certainly. But honest. Not a sophisticated philosophy, it just says: “What is this? Do we fuck it or eat it? Let’s try half and half.”... Now you might be liberal! You could be, I forgot. You could be one of those thoughtful, troublesome people. People who say: “Well things are actually a little bit like this AND a little bit like that. Soooo, let’s do whatever you say.” If you’re liberal, you have no purpose. You are the thing in your kitchen you never use. Something you bought once, while you were out at a market feeling frisky."

"The belief system that if you smiled hard enough into the face of God, you would eventually shit money."

"Some people don’t like Mr Cameron. Mr Cameron and his cube of air. He doesn’t seem to know where to put that thing down. He can’t find a place for it. I think the reason he can’t get rid of it is because it contains the essence of the Big Society, and nobody wants that shit."

"You laugh at the North, you think they’re all funny little short people who live in a big pie. Trying to sort out their relationship with the definite article. Throwing darts at their dinner."

"Scotland, the country where they fry the food five times to make sure it’s dead; the country where they invented bacon flavour mouthwash."

"Days are stupid length. They are just long enough to get regret and then you have to go to bed."

"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."

"If you're a young man, you know, you live in a sexual tyranny anyway and your penis is Kim Jong. Sex decides everything. You can have a car crash. You lie in the ditch thinking: "What is the erotic twist in the situation? I can't quite seem to see it yet"."

"Don’t get feminist on me! Look, I’m not a feminist, 'cause I'm a man. I'm not qualified. I can't be a feminist. Just like most women.. If women were serious about feminism they would have everything that feminists talk about getting. Equal pay, you could have that tomorrow! IF... women would give up bitching about one another for FIVE MINUTES. Which doesn’t seem to be possible."

"The truth is that women are like chick peas under a psychopath's hat. They can be cherishable and zingy and suprising. But you ask too many questions and you get killed."

"And the thing is woman do have to do all kinds of things themselves. And they lie about it 'cause of all the pressure. Woman go and get their hair made bullet-proof and get the implants. The silly clothes and the stupid shoes everybody wears now. You know these... And they say: "Oh, l enjoy. l did it for me, you know. l like the fact that it takes me 45 minutes to get in or out of a chair." l've always wanted to look like a prawn who's being airlifted. lt's a total lie. That's not the kind of thing a person does for themselves. You know what l did for me? I had an eclair inside an eclair. That's the kind of thing you do for yourself."

"And what is the point of putting a picture of the perfectly ordinary Irish smile on the box of cigarettes? what's that all about? what you supposed to achieve?"

"And I’ve been on the road for too long, I know I have, because I was in the supermarket the other day, and I saw this tiny, heartbreaking can of beans. And it really made me want to cry. I just thought how old or sick or small do you need to be to need those beans? And it was on a high shelf, you know, you’d be climbing the ladder for days just to get at those four beans."

"- Where are you?"

"You have to have a good relationship with pleasure, Australians seem to, on the whole your approach seems to be to go, "What's that? Ahh, yeah, it's one of those" which is a lot healthier than the Irish one, which is to go, "What's that? That looks nice. I'll wait till everyone's asleep, then I'll steal it, so nobody will see me enjoy myself and then I won't have to feel ashamed. I can just let the guilt fester for the rest of my life and spend all my remaining years drunk.""

"The ultimate human shopping list: I’d like some illegal, some forbidden, some frowned upon and some downright disgusting, please. I’ll have that to go, thank you!"

"Where is the cake? Cake is the language of love. I don't see any cakes in the building. You know, people say that to you: "I love you, I love you!" Yeah? Gimme a fuckin' eclair."

"Women are not allowed to be seen to enjoy themselves on lots of ways. They have a test for that in Ireland now, they’ve scientifically perfected that. The Madonna-Whore-Quotient of a woman. You know, if when a woman puts her hand together to pray, and when she’s crying the blood and she levitates and you don’t get a sustained hum in A Flat, she’s a fucking whore!"

"- I know what you're thinking!"

"You know, fucking mornings! What is that about? That time is a huge lie. "Get up, get up! We’re going to be late! Quickly! Late, imagine it! The disaster if we’re late! What’ll happen if we’re late? I can’t even bear to think about it!" Late is an idea. Late is bullshit. It doesn’t matter how fucking late you are, you can turn up in your pyjamas scratching your nuts with a fork, the same old shit’s gonna be there. It’s a lie! People running up to you saying, "what do you think?" in the morning! "What do you think?"! "Think? Think?! I’m not even fucking breathing, go away with your 'think'!" It takes you three quarters of an hour to find your face and apologise to it. And how do they lure you back into the world, into the human race, into consciousness itself? With the great traditional breakfast! As eaten here and in Britain and Ireland and lots of other places: Fried slices of dead pig, tubes of dead pig, some fungus and a chicken's period on a plate, "WELCOME BACK! WE MISSED YOU WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING! ENJOY!" Of course you can always have the healthy option, of course you can, of course you can!... Some yummy cereal, mmhmmmm dust with milk! Says it right there on the box in big primary coloured letters ‘contains fibre’. Goody gumdrops, I was up all night fantasizing about fucking fibre. You know that feeling when you get a belly full of fibre and you can skip round the room taunting everybody who didn’t get theirs? Remember all those times in your life when you stopped strangers in the street and screamed at them “I need some fibre!""

"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."

"These fingers are from Florence. Yves Saint Laurent himself designed my arse. My nipples are reconstructed from an early unfinished blue print by Coco Chanel, hence their lopsided charm. One of them is on my shoulder. The other five I keep handily between my toes, which, in themselves are a bit embarrassing. But fuck it, it was the 80’s, you had to have suede."