Top 135 Quotes & Sayings by Hugh Laurie - Page 2

When I was a small boy, 10, 11, 12, probably somewhere around there, when I first heard a blues song on the radio, it was a jolt of electricity. It grabbed me by the throat, it made me shiver. And I knew from that moment that this was for me and this would be with me for the rest of my life.

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.

The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.

I've never been clever with money. I will buy anything at the top of the market.

Acting is largely about putting on masks, and music is about removing them.

L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally.

It alarms me to think of all that I have read and how little of it has stayed with me.

The strange thing - and this is one of the advantages of being incredibly shallow and superficial - is that wherever I am, that's sort of home.

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.

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 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.

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.

Ideas are 10 a penny. It's the execution that's the hard thing to do. House is standing up against a tide of sentiment and emotionalism over reason that threatens to engulf this world. When you think about it, a rationalist, a man of science and reason, is in a pretty lonely position.

I'm reasonably easygoing. Messing up my lines or making a fool of myself is where you find my fears. Like a lot of English people, I'm prey to embarrassment - the dread that everyone's sort of sniggering at you, that you're going to look like an idiot. I think that sort of halts us all.

I think actors are attracted to the idea of other identities and concealing themselves behind some other identity.

I feel when acting, I am sometimes overly self-conscious; I think, 'Going, no, don't, put your eyebrow back where it was and, you know, turn to the left.' You know, I'm sort of very consciously adopting this character. But with music, I don't know. I found it was a question of just closing my eyes and just sort of letting things come out.

I think good-looking people seldom make good television. And American television studios almost concede before they start: 'Well, it won't be good, but at least it'll be good-looking. We'll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things.'

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.

Directing is the best job going. I don't understand why everybody doesn't want to direct. It's an absolutely fascinating combination of skills required and puzzles set on every level - emotional and practical and technical. It calls up on such a wide variety of skills. I find it completely absorbing. I just love the whole process.

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.

Now, my mom always said two wrongs don't make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.

Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive.

Humility was a cult in my family. I only got it out of my father by accident when he was very old that he had won an Olympic gold medal.

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 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.

Happiness is the twinkle in your grandmother's eye as you reverse the tractor off her legs.

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.

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.

This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed.

[...] and as I walked, I tried to see the funny side. It wasn't easy, and I'm still not sure that I managed it properly, but it's just something I like to do when things aren't going well. Because what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.

Every day is the opportunity for a better tomorrow.

It gets on top of me and I get frustrated.

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.

Success on a cosmic level completely eludes me. I'm deeply suspicious of things being too good. It's part of my superstition, I think, to generate pain in order to give the illusion of gain. I'm not saying I reject success, but honestly, I don't quite know how to deal with it. It's an old feeling: As soon as you have the thing you've been going after all your life, that reasonable degree of security, you start kicking against it, doubting it.

Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.

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.

People are falling all over themselves to send you free shoes and free cufflinks and colonic irrigations for two. Nobody ever offers you a free acceptance speech. There just seems to be a gap in the market. I would love to be able to pull out a speech by Dolce & Gabbana.

It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

I do have a huge problem, a huge problem. In fact, worse than watching is hearing. I cannot stand to hear my own voice. When it's coming out of my mouth right now it sounds fantastically interesting to me. It's rich in light and shade, it goes up and down. But when I hear it either on TV or even on someone's answering machine, I just sound like I've had half my brain removed.

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.

I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don’t know why they’d decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture. It could rain in a room this big.

Keep on being yourself.

Russian vodka is OK if you need to clean the oven. For drinking, it must henceforth be Polish.

One thing House needs Wilson for is vanity. He needs someone to laugh at his jokes.

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.

I never went to drama school, I don't have any certificates saying: 'He's a qualified actor.' But I did think that House was something I didn't have to apologise for. It was something I was really proud of and it was sort of ... whether you liked it or not, it was undeniable.

It's a holy city for music.

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.

They, all of them, work incredibly hard to make me seem clever and heroic, neither of which I am.

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.

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.

Boxing is fascinating. It's good for the soul to be made to feel clumsy. I swank around during the week thinking I'm a big cheese, but you don't feel like that when you're in the ring with a chap who knows what he's doing. It's ritual humiliation. I'm going to be slugged about and probably killed, but I love it and have to do something to keep fit.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

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

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.

Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless

There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now.

Just because it's a bad job doesn't mean I need to do it badly.

I am very, very aware at all times. I'm watching myself, I'm listening to myself, I'm judging myself, critiquing myself all the time, and I will know when I do something and I will immediately say, "Can I do another one, because I didn't quite get that thing," or that I wanted to do something there and it didn't quite work.

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.