Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My eyebrows could do with a trim.
Every generation of children has its private hero.
I am 54 and age is slowly writing itself on my face.
Acting is the most demanding, painful job in the world.
When a writer dies you get a higher standard of obituary.
I abhor nothing more than bumping into someone I know on the Tube.
Acting in a stage play is like working the evening shift in an office.
The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.
The moon puts on an elegant show, different every time in shape, colour and nuance.
Obviously I am not bothered about men's fashion - is anyone, apart from Jonathan Ross?
Theatricals can be irritating, but will provide a better night out than mobile phone salespeople.
I'm an armchair kind of guy, especially when it's raining, which it always is and always will be.
The book may be garbage, but if it weighs in at a kilo or more, I stand before its author in awe.
The Bible has no doubt had much influence in its time, but it provides very few laughs. None, in fact.
An uninspiring canvas becomes a glamorous masterpiece when it is reattributed to a better-known artist.
I like doing things I haven't learnt about yet. I've always been interested in art, and I love doing art.
Travel books are, by and large, boring. They lodge uncomfortably between fact, fiction and autobiography.
The outfits come and go but there is a constant that I like about the catwalk model: the snotty expression.
It was Julie Burchill who decreed that, beyond a certain age, a man should not be seen in a leather jacket.
Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.
I couldn't really see the point of having lunch unless it started at 1:00 and ended a week later in Monte Carlo.
It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.
About every four years, someone says to me, "I've got a friend who looks exactly like you." What can you say to this?
Sometimes it's good to do something that you've never done before, so yesterday, I went out to buy Elton John's new album.
If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk happy for a long time, fall in love; happy forever, take up gardening.
If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s.
Don Quixote's 'Delusions' is an excellent read - far better than my own forthcoming travel book, 'Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.'
It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance.
I find it hilarious that there are academics who try to analyse chemical changes in the brains of students while exposing them to gags.
I see my large nose, like half an avocado. I broke it falling downstairs when I was six, and it now resembles a large blob of play-dough.
Listening to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 is the most miserable thing any human being can do, but attending awards ceremonies isn't far behind.
Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may originally have been 10 hilarious one-liners.
Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world.
I read 'Crime and Punishment' years ago and don't recall the details of it, but I do retain a strong sense of the creeping paranoia and panic.
After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.
The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.
My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.
Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.
When synchronised swimming first appeared on TV, we laughed very heartily, and I, for one, applauded the decision to introduce humour into the Olympics.
Sky and clouds and trees and little figures relaxing in the perfect rural rhythm of their surroundings: these are the staples of a Gainsborough landscape.
A savage review is much more entertaining for the reader than an admiring one; the little misanthrope in each of us relishes the rubbishing of someone else.
The history of the relationship between comedy and swimming is short indeed. Of course it is always funny when someone falls into water, but that's about it.
Only the pun remains. The pun, beloved of Shakespeare, children and tabloid headline-writers, is normally eschewed in the modern, sophisticated circles in which I move.
I myself am pathetically impressed when I meet writers of very long novels. How can they spend so many hundreds of hours at the miserable, lonely pastime of creating fiction?
I've been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I've come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.
I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.
It is London fashion week, and once again I haven't been invited to any shows. This is upsetting given my well-known love of fashion, or, as I think of it, playing with the dressing-up box.
A female friend who caught me watching Fashion TV reckons its audience is largely made up of slobbering men who are just taking a break from the appalling Men & Motors channel. I don't agree.
When they meet a stand-up comic, people sometimes remark: 'That must be the hardest job in the world.' Among comedians, only Freddie Starr is not embarrassed and slightly appalled by this remark.
I've noticed that my resolutions involve me not doing stuff that I wasn't going to do anyway so here's something more positive. I'm going to retrain as a Latin teacher in a provincial public school.