"This seems however I really am the luckiest guy in the world. Several years of addiction, right in the middle of an epidemic, surrounded by the living dead. But not me. I am negative. It's official. And once the pain goes away, that's when the real battle starts. Depression. Boredom. You feel so fucking low, you'll want to fucking top yourself."

"Since I was on remand, they've had me on this programme. The state-sponsored addiction. Three sickly sweet doses of methadone a day instead of smack. But it's never enough. And at the moment, it's nowhere near enough. I took all three this morning, and now I've got 18 hours to go till my next shot, and the sweat on my back is like a layer of frost. I need to visit the mother-superior for one hit. One fucking hit to get us over this long, hard day."

"Our only response was to keep on going and fuck everything. Pile misery upon misery, heap it up on a spoon and dissolve it with a drop of bile. Then squirt it into a stinking, purulent vein, and do it all over again. Keep on going, getting up, going out, robbing, stealing, fucking people over. Propelling ourselves with longing towards the day that it would all go wrong. Because no matter how much you stash or how much you steal, you'll never have enough. No matter how often you go out and rob and fuck people over, you always need to get up and do it all over again."

"It looks easy this, but it's not. Looks like a doss, like a soft option. But living like this, it's a full-time business."

"One thousand years from now, there won't be any guys and there won't be any girls, just wankers. Sounds all right to me."

"The downside of coming off junk was I knew I would need to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness. It was awful. They reminded me so much of myself. I could hardly bear to look at them. Take Sick Boy, for instance. He came off junk at the same time as me — not because he wanted to, you understand, but just to annoy me. Just to show me how easily he could do it, thereby downgrading my own struggle. Sneaky fucker, don't you think?"

"I don't feel the sickness yet, but it's in the post. That's for sure. I'm in the junkie limbo at the moment. Too ill to sleep. Too tired to stay awake, but the sickness is on its way. Sweat, chills, nausea. Pain and craving. A need like nothing else I've ever known will soon take hold of me. It's on its way."

"[explaining the gaps in his employment history - from a deleted scene included on some home media releases] Yes, I can. The truth...well, the truth is that I've had a long-standing problem with heroin addiction. I've been known to sniff it, smoke it, swallow it, stick it up my arse and inject it into my veins. I've been trying to combat this addiction, but unless you count social security scams and shoplifting, I haven't had a regular job in years."

"Relinquishing junk, stage one: preparation. For this you will need: one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol. Mouthwash. Vitamins. Mineral water. Lucozade. Pornography. One mattress, one bucket for urine, one for feces, and one for vomitus. One television, and one bottle of Valium, which I've already procured from my mother who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way, also a drug addict. And now I'm ready. All I need is one final hit to soothe the pain while Valium takes effect."

"People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored. But what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand, and you're still nowhere near it. When you're on junk, you have only one worry: scoring. When you're off it, you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can't get pissed. Got money: drinking too much. Can't get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships, and all the things that really don't matter when you've got a sincere and truthful junk habit."

"[opening narration] Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

"Brianna Maja Harrington - Baby Dawn"

"Keith Allen - Dealer"

"Irvine Welsh - Mikey Forrester"

"Shirley Henderson - Gail"

"Pauline Lynch - Lizzy"

"Susan Vidler - Allison"

"Eileen Nicholas - Mrs. Renton"

"James Cosmo - Mr. Renton"

"So, there you are! I might have known it would end up like this. To think of all the love and affection I've wasted on you. Well, if that's how you treat your poor old mother in the autumn years of her life, all I can say is, "Go ahead. Be crucified. See if I care." [storms off] I might have known it would end up like this. Sex, sex. That's all young people are interested in nowadays. I don't know what the world's coming to."

"Honk if you love Brian."

"See the movie that's controversial, sacrilegious, and blasphemous. But if that's not playing, see The Life of Brian."

"Now, you listen here: 'e's not the Messiah, 'e's a very naughty boy! Now go away!"

"A motion picture destined to offend nearly two thirds of the civilized world. And severely annoy the other third."

"You lucky bastards! You lucky, jammy bastards!"

"Oh, what I wouldn't give to be spat at in the face. I sometimes hang awake at night dreaming of being spat at in the face."

"What Jesus blatantly fails to appreciate is that it's the meek who are the problem."

"Cheer up, Brian. You know what they say: Some things in life are bad. They can really make you mad. Other things just make you swear and curse. When you're chewing on life's gristle, Don't grumble. Give a whistle. And this'll help things turn out for the best. And... [music]"

"... And the beast shall be huge and black, and the eyes thereof red with the blood of living creatures, and the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a three-headed serpent, and throughout the lands, there'll be a great rubbing of parts. Yeeah..."

"A man shall strike his donkey."

"Sue Jones-Davies"

"Kenneth Colley:"

"Michael Palin:"

"Terry Jones:"

"Eric Idle:"

"Terry Gilliam:"

"And there shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there will be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment…at this time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before around eight o’clock..."

"John Cleese:"

"Graham Chapman:"

"I've always thought that Life of Brian was the best thing Python did by quite a long shot."

"Four hundred years ago, we would have been burnt for this film. Now, I'm suggesting that we've made an advance."

"Nothing can alter the fact that if you were to make a list of all the greatest works of art in all fields and all the greatest contributors to those works of art, you would find that this scene of the incarnation, the story of the incarnation, has played the largest part. Now, in our 20th century this film produces a sort of graffiti version of it. And I don't think in the eyes of posterity it will have a very distinguished place."

"Makes Ben-Hur look like an epic."

"Just when you thought you were saved..."

"He wasn't the messiah. He was a very naughty boy."

"The film that is so funny it was banned in Norway."