Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Julian Barratt

Films do have suspense and tensions and scares and jumps, and I like to write things that have both in them, comedy and horror, but sometimes they are hard to balance.

Sometimes it takes you two or three seconds to get your head round a joke and laugh at it. With a snot-bubble laugh, it comes instinctively - almost in spite of yourself. It's caused by something silly - like when a little kid says something unexpectedly bizarre.

We used to have to convince people we were funny, and it didn't always work.

With the 'Boosh,' we were trying to do this strange, weird thing that had its own language and visual style, and it wasn't really what the powers that be wanted.

I can't do jokes. I've always come from left field and tried to subvert conventional comedy. I started as a rebellion against that - albeit a very soft and surreal rebellion. It's escapist.

I miss quite major cultural signposts quite often.

I've been a horror fan pretty much in the sense that my sense of horror and my sense of humor were both equally kindled by films as a kid.

The secret of comedy is don't grow up. That's why some comedians are a nightmare, because they never grow up.

When things start running a bit too well on the tracks, I tend to derail them if I can.

Musicals are just funny to me.

For me, there's no dichotomy between being shy or a performer, because I think it's more a way of slightly presenting a version of things to the world.

I ran off stage at my first gig. Halfway through it, I forgot my lines and didn't know what to do, so I just ran out of the building down towards a lake. I was going to throw myself in, but the compere came out and said, 'No, it's going well, come back and finish the gig!'

I like the countryside. I like chopping wood. I'd like to be a carpenter.

With something that's not based just in comedy, you can be a bit weirder in a slightly realistic way.

I don't have any friends with cool clothes.

Most stand-up is incredibly boring. It's time for people to do something else.

Most comedians are borderline psychotic. It's what makes their work interesting.

I write tragedies and things when I'm alone. Chekhovian dramas.

Me and Noel went to HBO once and pitched this really ludicrous idea about us driving around in a haunted car, and they just stared at us. Literally stared at us! It was awful. Luckily, we were together, so we could laugh about it, but if we were on our own, it would have been one of the worst moments ever.

I am a man who dreams of culture.

I liked horror and comedy, basically, from a young age, but I just ended up getting into comedy because there was - I could do stand-up comedy, and that was my way into this business, and then there was no stand-up horror, and I didn't know how to get into that world.

It's a weird profession, as I don't really consider myself an actor. I did at one point, and I went and started doing auditions, and I was so useless at them and so demoralised by doing audition after audition and not getting them and also not being able to take it in my stride at all. I just felt crushed and worthless.

When you're really laughing, you feel like a little kid, and nothing matters.

The profession is rife with fear about your age, about your validly, longevity, appearance. It's vanity, and it's hard to sort of avoid all those things; they come at you as an actor.

We're so insecure, comedians. 'Did you laugh? Do you think I was funny?'

Performers often can be quite socially inept, you know? And even great comedians are like that.

I did try and do some spooky stand up once, and some of my stand-up had - I tried to do some horror stand-up, but it didn't really work very well.

It's good to give people a jolt. If they're expecting one thing, it's important to give them something else. If you do something startling, audiences might at first freak out, but then they start to think, 'This is not going to be conventional. I'm going to enjoy this.'

People can see that we are part of a tradition of absurd comedy, stretching from Spike Milligan and Peter Cook through to Monty Python and Vic Reeves. We're not like Ricky Gervais's hyper-real cringe comedy. We're at the other end of the scale, but there's room for the sillier stuff, too.

You don't need a high concept to make a great film, of course. 'Withnail & I' is not - it's probably not much on paper, but it's one of the funniest films ever made.

I'm always trying to do anything between comedy and horror.

It's strange, but something about lack of structure needs a structure itself. Otherwise, after a while, it's like looking at a Rothko painting or a Peter Greenaway film. You think, 'OK, I want to see something else now.'

If the 'Boosh' was a bit more of a specific thing, or less multi-limbed, we would probably have done it and moved on.

'Galaxy Quest' is a fantastic film.

I was going to be a jazz-fusion guitarist. I came to London at one point with my mate, and we were going to make it. We spent three days there and went back home to our mummies.

Not really a good idea to eat things fans have made because you don't know what state of mind they were in when they made them.

I think with performing, initially I was terrified on stage, absolutely terrified. And I did it again and again and again, and I learned sort of how it works, and then I was able to do it.

I don't like talking about myself; I'm not good at analysing myself. I don't want to analyse myself.

My dad wanted to be a musician, so when I started playing guitar, he was like, 'Go for it.' That is what I did for ages; I was in bands. And then I went to university and got into comedy somehow.

I've got a lot of friends with whom I discuss jazz.

We should send a load of bad celebrities to colonise Mars. They would have to mate in space, and then their children would be sent back to Earth in 50 years' time.

I could say I'm a writer or that I'm a musician but I don't really do music; I do music to go with things I'm developing. Then I do act in a few things, but I'm not really an actor. I'm not a comedian, but I am known for comedy. I just don't know. I feel like I'm a slightly interdisciplinary jack of all trades.

Sometimes, you write things that sound really great when you're at home but don't work when you shine the light of an audience on them. Great writing and live writing are two separate things.

I was in a band called Groove Solution. Because there was a groove crisis, and we solved it.

I can act with either eye, but you've got to be twice as good as an actor to act with one eye. You need to put all your emotions just through one eye and really punch it out of that eye. I found it quite difficult to do at first, and then I found a technique that allowed me to act with one eye, which I patented.

In comedy terms, usually when the weather's bad, it goes much better. When it's sunny, people don't come to see comedy gigs because they're all really happy and don't need cheering up.

Adapting a book doesn't mean the book stops just because you've made a film out of it.

I don't do stand-up anymore.

If you come away from a show thinking of an image, that's as good as remembering a joke. A lot of those shows, like 'The Office,' they are brilliant, but they're not visually interesting.

We have a need to make people laugh at things they'd never thought about, make them laugh at things that aren't logical.

I love 'Airplane,' and I love 'Naked Gun' and all those films, where you're parodying.

I've done interviews in the past where, apparently, I didn't give the journalist any eye contact. I'm a bit shy, yes. I've thought about refusing to do any press at all.

We just thought of 'Boosh' as an extension of our childhoods in a way, the stuff we had grown up on and loved: 'Monty Python,' The Goodies, Frank Zappa. It spoke to a certain type of person, and we just carried on doing it.

It's not immediately categorisable. I don't know what to say when anyone asks what the 'Boosh' is.

Sometimes I do that quite a lot, go back and forth a lot between ideas. Try things out.

This business is ephemeral, and you have to maintain a healthy cynicism about it. There's a 'flavour of the month' aspect to it, so you have to keep moving on and mutating.

Sport doesn't do anything for me. And I don't do anything for it.

We did have that, in the background of the character and the show, 'Mindhorn,' set on the Isle of Man, that every episode they would have to mention the temperate microclimate of the Isle of Man.

I want to create a world where all the rules are different. It should be magical to enter.

My dad listened to a load of jazz - Mahavishnu, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock.