Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by James May
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English journalist James May.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
There are very few things in real life on which I agree with Jeremy Clarkson, surprisingly few for people who have to make a TV show together. But that's part of what makes it work.
I'm a big user of digital technology, but I don't find it beautiful.
I'm not very ambitious, sorry... I don't get up and think, 'Today, I shall achieve greatness.' It's more, 'Today I might have Marmite on my toast.'
Bicycles should not be insured or registered, and cycling proficiency should not be subject to a test. That's just weak-kneed nonsense from people who believe the world can be cured with paperwork.
In 1988, before I'd written a word for a car magazine or stood in front of a camera, I was a subeditor on 'The Engineer.'
I've never quite trusted water; I don't think it's entirely healthy.
I hate the idea of people nicking my stuff, but in all honesty, I'm pretty well off. If a genuinely desperate man on his last gasp nicks my coat from the pub on a freezing night, well, he's welcome to it. It'll change his life. Mine's only inconvenienced by having to buy another one.
Men think that not being able to wire a plug somehow makes them more creative or intellectual. It just makes them morons.
Look - think very hard about the car you want. Then buy that one, brand new.
Jeremy Clarkson wants to become a farmer - he's bought a field - Hammond wants to open a supermarket, and I'd like to spend my days owning a shoe shop.
Never has a material been as overrated as leather.
Me, I'm a lesbian: I find women fascinating.
I think women, especially, are bored of blokes being useless.
Despite some of the stories that have gone around, I've never had a big, flouncey strop about how much I'm paid. Considering I have a pretty interesting life out of making telly, I'm really paid quite well for it. So I'm not complaining.
All cars have a natural gait, a speed at which they're happiest. The Corniche is perfect at around 65-70mph. I did a ton in it once, which was completely horrible. Apparently, it'll reach 120mph, but not with me in it.
The V50 is a genuinely great car, even as a diesel.
Watching people move to nice music is very pleasant.
Modern man is in crisis. He has degenerated from the redoubtable pillar he became through centuries of refinement and slipped resignedly into the popular depiction of himself as a witless under-achiever, incapable of looking after himself or those around him.
I don't play a lot of games. I play flight simulators, mostly.
I felt that needed to be addressed: the idea that anything a man tries to do properly or thoroughly is dismissed as either metrosexual or OCD. But why can't you be practical and artistic at the same time, which was considered perfectly normal in the Renaissance?
I'm in favour of the old roles being blurred. The old division at school where the boys did metalwork and woodwork and the girls did needlework and domestic science is awful, really - and I'm glad it's gone.
I don't know what a gazillion is.
The shirt thing just started one day when I bought one with a really interesting pattern, and people laughed at it, so I thought, 'I'll keep buying daft shirts with flowers on.'
Justice should not admit a public's thirst for pure revenge.
Deep down inside, I am lazy.
A car isn't a classic just because it's old. To be a classic, a car has to tell us something of its time.
There's this perception that I've got this huge collection of old cars. I don't.
I am actually a perfectly capable modern man who can cook, clean, wash, and find my way to places, but nobody believes it.
There's a great deal of poetry in working out how things work, cutting bits of metal, trying to mend stuff.
It's healthy to have two car shows. Why not? The viewer gets twice as much car show to watch.
I'd quite like to film in Central Park. I think we have asked, but we're not allowed to.
Richard Hammond is a reasonably fit bloke who looks after himself. Me and Jeremy aren't.
Nice girls at school whose fathers owned a Volvo were unapproachable and probably condemned to spinsterhood for all time, simply because no one had the courage to advance up the drive.
Jeremy can't do anything. I've never discovered anything he can do. I mean, he can drive a car round a track pretty well, but he wouldn't be able to light a fire.
I think any carmaker that had a brain and was looking very long-term would think about 'Personalised Transport Solutions' - which may not be a car.
I'm conflicted because I like being in deserts. I find them sort of cleansing, but there's another part of me that hates dust. And I particularly hate dust in cars, so it's a huge conflict going on there.
When I get into a car - any car - I still find it amazing that I'm allowed to drive it away.
I remember thinking, at the end of 2015 on New Year's Eve, I'm actually quite glad to see the back of that one. 2015 was a bit complicated and had some very traumatic bits in it.
It's fairly well known that we all hate each other to some extent. 'Top Gear' has worked because of a combination of camaraderie and mutual dislike. That's actually the magic.
I'm a great believer in the principle of try it and work it out. If a gadget is designed well, you can easily work out how to use it. But if you can't, it isn't shameful to read the instructions.
I very briefly had a microwave oven that I quickly gave away, because I could never work out what they do better than a regular oven.
I'm only a freelance TV presenter and, in many ways, it's all just been a massive fluke.
The Amazon lot are perfectly reasonable, level-headed people who just want to make TV programmes. I don't think they are the enemy of the BBC or the other way round. It's not a war; these things can coexist. We can have Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and BT Sport, and people can make choices. That's what modern life is all about.
The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions. It empowers the human machine, and with no input beyond perhaps a trendy isotonic health drink in a brightly coloured bottle at an inflated price.
I think there are bigger problems in the world than Jeremy Clarkson.
I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.
They're pretty accurate, the clocks in mobile phones.
I've got a new pair of trainers. That's the only difference in my life since I started working for Amazon.
I got into it just thinking, 'Oh, television, maybe I'll have a go at that.' I could've never imagined that it would get to this.
I don't look like Susan Boyle!
I hope we're not barred from Argentina - I'd quite like to go back for another ham and cheese sandwich.
I do worry about breaking things - things that don't belong to me.
I've never thought about marriage or children.
It would be a bloody tough call to do 'Top Gear' without Jeremy. That would be a bit of a daft idea.
In 'Top Gear,' everything goes wrong because you have Jeremy Clarkson, so any practical activity ends in a pile of bits.
Someone once told me that I was 12 inside. The only thing 12-year-olds crave is more Lego. Lego is fun; it's therapeutic. It's a beautiful sensation when you click the pieces together.
When it comes to watches, it's ironic that you can spend thousands on an exquisitely made mechanical watch, and yet it will be less accurate than a five-quid digital bought from a petrol station.
A lot of television assumes the viewer is a bit daft, and I don't think they are.
I woke up one morning and realised that one of the problems with being a middle-aged man - of being a man in general - is the tyranny of fashion.
I was a car journalist when I started on 'Top Gear.' It was all about cars. And then it all spun out of all control, and we turned into figures of ridicule to keep the viewers happy. It's a fair deal, I suppose.
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