Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing into a metaphor.
I have always stuck up for Western medicine. You can chew all the celery you want, but without antibiotics, three quarters of us would not be here.
I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think - I don't just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it.
The only good thing I've ever noticed about money, the only positive aspect of an otherwise pretty vulgar commodity, is that you can use it to buy things.
In film, because you know where the ending is, characters can change, but in television, you substitute revelation for change, and that can be hard to pull off.
I wouldn't be able to act like Al Pacino or play the piano like Dr. John, But I could probably act better than Dr. John and play the piano better than Al Pacino.
I couldn't imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much.
It is the middle of December now, and we are about to travel to Switzerland - where we plan to ski a little, relax a little, and shoot a Dutch politician a little.
Muddy Waters, I suppose, was my first great hero. You know, every boy wants to be a guitar player, and Muddy Waters was just the king. He was the King Bee. He was it.
Seems to me that this business, for actors anyway, is not so much about whether or not you do good work. It's about whether or not you get the chance to do good work.
When school friends would think about appearing on stage as the most frightening, the most awful, intimidating experience ever, I knew that it was something I could do.
I don't talk like House, or walk like him. I certainly don't think like him. I don't like to think for more than 15 minutes at a stretch actually; I am a fragile flower.
Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.
I really do believe the camera steals the soul. But that may be because I'm worried about my soul. I don't have much of a soul to begin with; I can't afford to lose much.
LA runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy... It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weatherwise, socially and professionally.
I didn't realize House would be the central character, more the bitter comic relief appearing occasionally. I relish his wounded nature - the lameness, the scarred Byronic hero.
I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away.
We put this 15-year old girl on the cover of a fashion magazine, and tell everyone she is the epitome of sexual perfection, but we jail anyone who touches her for another three years.
When the ship goes down, the waves very quickly roll over the top of it, and attention shifts elsewhere. It's just the natural order of things in TV - in life - and is as it should be.
I think classical music tuition is, well, was when I was a child, was an abomination. I think in some ways it is one of life's great tragedies for everybody who gives up an instrument.
I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.
I think that’s the lesson you learn in life. As you get older you realize you’re never going to grow up and you’re never going to be ready. And you may, as well, do things now, don’t wait
They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them.
Winning a rowing race is not like winning anything else. Here's my theory: you're facing backwards, so you're looking at the people you're beating--and there's something exquisite about that.
I suppose actors crave attention of some kind or they have suffered some form of arrested development and are still living in a sort of child's fantasy existence at some level in their psyche.
I don't have a single complete show or movie or anything else that I could look at and say, 'Nailed that one.' But endless dissatisfaction is, I suppose, what gets us out of bed in the morning.
I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.
I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.
I travel to work on my motorcycle, so it's jeans, boots and a brown Aero leather jacket that weighs as much as I do. If it were black, it would seem like I've got a Brando idea going on, which I don't.
Even the greatest poets, I think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human - I was gonna say mind, but it's actually the entire body. It somehow seems to infuse the entire body.
I'm finding it increasingly difficult to simply walk down the street. In New York, I dashed in to buy a big pair of sunglasses to conceal myself, but the guy behind the counter shouted 'Hey! It's Dr. House.'
One great benefit of not being on TV every week is that people will be a lot less interested in what I have in my supermarket basket. I could even un-tint my car windows - or at least opt for a lighter shade.
The financing of all TV shows is dictated by finding an audience between 18 and 49. I have now passed beyond 49, so probably, I am no longer a desirable commodity for TV. And I am at peace with that; that's fine.
Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.
The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.
Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.
Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.
I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.
Humility was considered a great virtue in my family household. No show of complacency or self-satisfaction was ever tolerated. Patting yourself on the back was definitely not encouraged, and pleasure or pride would be punishable by death.
To tell you the truth, the older I get, the less I know. I keep meeting people, both older and younger, who seem to have accrued so much more knowledge or expertise or certainty about who they are and the jobs they do. I just marvel at it.
It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement.
I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others.
People assume that I'm very highly trained, that I studied and did years and years of Shakespeare. I have no training whatsoever and I've only done one Shakespeare play at university. If people want to believe that, I'm happy to go along with it.
The great trap for non-American actors trying to play Americans, I think, is to start thinking of American-ness as a characteristic. It isn't. It is no more a character trait than height. It is just a physical fact, and that's all there is to it.
Lots of people would say House doesn't have any charm at all. I would disagree, though: I find him immensely charming and endlessly entertaining. He has a sort of grace and a wit about him, and ultimately, I think he is on the side of the angels.
Riding my motorcycle around L.A. is like my own video game. But unlike many folks at the wheel, I am occupied with getting where I'm going and keeping myself safe. Most people are applying makeup, texting, and checking out the beauty in the next car.
Clive Dunn, as I understand it, retired to the south of Spain, where he worked extensively in watercolours. I don't own any of Clive Dunn's watercolours. I loved him in 'Dad's Army,' loved him. But not enough to actually seek out his watercolour work.
I'm not a religious man... I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.
I don't think of myself as funny. I think of myself as rather grave, actually. And I'm suspicious of fun. I never quite know what that is or how to deal with it or how to generate it. That's my fault. I know it's a burden on the people I'm with. It's tiresome.
I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give.