About Chopper Read
Whether you like him or hate him, there’s one thing we can all agree on – Chopper Read was one colourful individual. Born in the mid-50s, Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read was an Australian convicted criminal, gang member and author. While he was alive he wrote a series of semi-autobiographical fictional crime novels and children’s books.
Having been bullied at school, he became an accomplished street fighter and leader of the Surrey Road gang which had a notorious reputation for extreme violence. He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers and later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld. Usually with a blowtorch or bolt cutters.
He then went on to prison, got into writing and eventually had a movie made about him with Hollywood actor Eric Bana playing the title role as Chopper Read. Here’s our all time favourite quotes of Choppers which solidifies him as one of the most psychopathic larrikins Australia has ever produced.
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Best Chopper Read Quotes
“I’m 37 years old. I’m an old man now. I don’t do those things anymore.”
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.”
“I’m a very very good shot. Would you like me to show you how good a shot I am?”
“I feel it is my duty to keep the rabbit population down. I know a lot of human rabbits, too. Hahaha.”
“He couldn’t knock the fluff off a cappuccino.”
“I once met a man who was paranoid about dying, so I shot him.”
“You will notice that I have not written about the horrors of prison life, or the conditions, hardships, treatment and so forth, because men reading this book who have been to jail will be bored to tears and people who haven’t been to jail can bloody well come in here and find out for themselves.”
“Why would I shoot a bloke, then carry him to the bloody car and wizz him off to the hospital at a hundred miles an hour? It defeats the purpose of having shot him in the first place.”
“Even Beethoven had his critics. See if you can name three of them.”
“When the blood starts flying. I’ll do business with the Devil himself. Victory at all costs is the only thing. You can discuss the moral ethics as we bury the enemy.”
“I’m just a bloody normal bloke. A normal bloke who likes a bit of torture.”
“I used to tell him he should use some of his money on plastic surgery and a face lift because he is dog ugly. He had a head like a robber’s dog.”
“I was thought the removal of toes with a bolt cutter was rather effeminate. I prefer a blow torch. The smell of flesh in the air.”
“You’ve probably read all the newspaper stories about me, and you’ve heard the word on the street about me, and you’ve probably got a picture in your head of what Chopper Read’s like and we’re sitting here at this bar all very nice and cosy and I’m a bit of a let down to you.”
“Well, I bashed you. That was good, wasn’t it? It was good for a bit of a giggle, anyway.”
“Look. The bloke’s been me best mate since 1975. We’ve had our fallouts from time to time, it’s no big deal. Y’know, it’s like — if ya mum stabs ya, whaddya do? Y-ya don’t get upset. Ya don’t get angry, ya go, ‘shit, mum’s stabbed me, I better get off to the hospital.'”
“It’s all right, Jimmy. I don’t hate you. You just broke my heart.”
“What about those poor bloody academics, those college graduates, battling their guts out to write some airy-fairy piece of exaggerated artwork? And here’s a bloke, sitting in a cell, who can’t spell, and he’s written a best-seller. It’s sold two hundred and fifty thousand copies. And it’s still selling. And he’s writing another one. And I can’t even spell. I’m semi-bloody-illiterate.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been me, could it? Else, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
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