Top 177 Quotes & Sayings by Bill Bailey - Page 2

I've started doing Bikram yoga. You're in a boiling hot room, bending over pretending to be a locust, you can't do that at the gym.

I said to my wife that if I had enough money I'd have my arms lengthened. Slightly longer arms would be great.

When the sun shines in Britain there's no finer place on Earth.

I was always part of the end-of-term review at school. We would mercilessly mock any slight weakness in the teachers.

I play the piano and that's how I learned about music. I then taught myself the guitar, drums, percussion and various other things, such as the bazooka, the mandolin, the Theremin, the alpine horn, the didgeridoo.

My mother was a classic matriarchal figure. She'd sing round the house and always had music on.

You have to go to Scotland at all times of the year - in order to appreciate the times when the sun does come out.

Melbourne has great eateries and you can go birdwatching.

My grandparents would have big, long arguments that were entertaining and that's where I first noticed, and was thrilled by, political discourse.

It's been Bill for so long people think my name is William, but it's not, it's Mark.

When you're a birder, you have all sorts of reference books, and you know about migratory patterns and technical stuff. Most people just look out the window, and say 'is that a pigeon?'

I don't like labels. I have always fought against that as a stand-up.

Films and gaming are blurring together, and it makes for brilliant popcorn entertainment.

There was something about stand-up that music wouldn't give me, which was my love of the spoken word and the mercurial tendency of language to respond to what happens to you.

I was asked to do an ad campaign for a supermarket once. I was baffled. It's strange when you realise your popularity or reputation is a marketable commodity; it's a stock, a currency.

I used to like beer, but it makes me feel slightly queasy.

But being in 'Doctor Who' is a dream come true. I've been a fan since I can remember watching TV.

I have anti-establishment hair.

The devil's in the detail and sometimes if you're thinking too big, you can miss the detail.

Some musicians are a bit humourless about their art: they lose sight of the fact that as well as exercising their muse, they're there to entertain.

I've always been reasonably upbeat about most things.

I've always been envious of certainty, of people who always seemed to have a plan for their lives.

Family helps you make clearer choices about things. Your priorities become clearer. Your obligations become clearer, and that is something I welcome.

I'm really grateful for the fact that I have full artistic control over my career. I can choose what film or TV projects I'm interested in doing.

It's a lovely moment when everyone's part of something greater than the sum of its parts. That encapsulates what a comedy gig should be, with the comic as the lightning rod, the Norse mischief god, getting the audience to do something they wouldn't necessarily do.

I had this plan that David Byrne was going to come through the West Country one day, think, 'Who's that guy?' and ask me to go on tour with them.

Riding a horse and using a phone camera is tricky but if you don't take pictures or record the moment, you lose it. You want to have a record of it.

I was asked to perform at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. But I was up a tree in Borneo filming a documentary about Alfred Russel Wallace! So it couldn't be done.

I did a show in this tiny town called Longyearbyen. We went snowmobiling around Svalbard and saw Arctic foxes, snow bunting, polar bear footprints and almost got lost in a blizzard.

I prefer the simple things and I love walking in the countryside, or going camping... but simplicity is hard. It's easier to over-complicate things.

My grandfather had strong opinions. He was an argumentative character and quite staunchly socialist.

Doing comedy around the world is a way of finding out how people tick.

If you become famous but haven't actually achieved anything, then your life has no real meaning - unless you're spectacularly shallow.

In 1994 I was doing a two-hander with Sean Lock in Edinburgh and there were more people in the cast than the audience. It was pretty grim, quite a chastening experience.

When you say 'Hello Wembley!' you're not just saying hello to a large shed. You're saying, 'Hello, I'm following all the greats that have played here before.'

We are almost in a time beyond jokes, beyond satire. When the Trump era is called the 'post-truth' period, then this is the greatest joke of all, albeit quite depressing.

Now, with the success of musical comedy like the Mighty Boosh, Flight of the Conchords and Bo Burnham, I feel vindicated.

I hate all those celebrity sculptures like Tussauds, where everyone is dressed in spangly suits and they are all smiling.

There was an existential moment - I don't know if I want to call it crisis - when I turned 50 and I felt 'this is interesting; how did this happen?' It affected me in a way I wasn't expecting. It made me pause for reflection.

I was an only child but I never longed for a sibling. It just didn't occur to me.

Not so great in England at the moment; in an online poll we came last, we actually came bottom of European countries for quality of life, because of things like the weather, obviously, late retirement, poor holiday, poor public services, poor health service; it's basically just a kind of grey, godless wilderness, full of cold pies and broken dreams.

That ideology was never going to work, was it? It was just cobbled together from different beliefs: The anti-intellectualism of the Khmer Rouge, the religious persecution of the Nazis, the enforced beard-wearing from the world of folk music, and the segregation and humiliation of women from the world of golf.

Three women walk into a pub and say, `Hooray, we've colonised a male-dominated joke format'

A horse walks into a bar, and the barman says "Why the long face?". The horse replies: "I'm deeply troubled by the anthropomorphic aspects of my existence and the extent to which I am now protected by law."

Tonight's show is about doubt. Or maybe it isn't - haven't made my mind up yet.

In Unity there is strength; We can move mountains when we're united and enjoy life - Without unity we are victims. Stay united.

Do not crush the flowers of wisdom with the hobnail boots of cynicism.

People say 'Bill, are you an optimist?' And I say, 'I hope so.'

I'm sort of like a post-modern vegetarian; I eat meat ironically.

I'm English and as such I crave disappointment. That's why I buy Kinder Surprise.

Hitler was a vegetarian. Just goes to show, vegetarianism, not always a good thing. Can in some extreme cases lead to genocide.

How many amoebas does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, no two! No four! ...no eight!

Of course, uh, the universe is gradually slowing down and, uh, will eventually collapse inwardly on itself, according to the laws of entropy when all it's thermal and mechanical functions fail, thus rendering all human endeavors ultimately pointless. Just to put the gig in some sort of context.

The reason we'd stopped was that the buffet car was on fire, that was the reason we stopped. One of the giant biscuits spontaneously combusted out of boredom. Whoever was charged with making the announcement momentarily lost all sense of procedure and we got this tantalizing glimpse into the chaos on the trains, and all we could hear was (bangs on microphone) "Gary, it's burning, what we gonna do?!" And everyone on the carriage just cheered, "Hooray! We're rubbish!"

The day after tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life - that way you've always got a couple of days in hand.

Three blokes go into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.

You remind me of the Siberian hunting spider, which adopts a highly convincing limp in three of its eight legs in order to attract its main prey, the so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralyzing venom, while the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian hunting spider, which actually has got a limp and is, as such, completely harmless, and a little bit bitter about the whole thing.

Why do people want to swim with dolphins? The equivalent would be an Indonesian fellow coming over here, going up to a farmer and saying 'Can I get in with the cows? I just fancy scuffling about with them.'

Contentment is knowing you're right. Happiness is knowing someone else is wrong.

I'm English, and as such I crave disappointment. That's why I buy Kinder Surprise. Horrible chocolate; nasty little toy: a double-whammy of disillusionment! Sometimes I eat the toy out of sheer despair.