Top 161 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Capaldi - Page 3

I wouldn't be here if it were not for the grant system that paid for me to go to art school - because my parents couldn't have afforded it.

I've only lost my temper three times in my whole life.

One year was so bad for me and my wife that we were going to have to sell our house until Elaine decided to change career and earn some money.

Once you reach a certain age, you find yourself visiting hospitals a lot.

Everybody loves monsters.

The nurses' job is emotional and distressing. Their day-to-day work is dealing with people withering and falling to pieces. So black humour is essential for them cope with that. It's just a consequence of their environment.

I failed the audition to get into drama school.

There are only a handful of really good TV programmes, and I'm blessed to be in one of them.

I love these sort of documentaries, which you might turn on late on a Saturday night - like, say, 'The Alma Cogan Story.' But they are ripe for spoofing, because the presenters are always so serious and anxious to make themselves look like rather attractive and interesting people.

'Atlantic City' is very good.

When I was at school, you couldn't draw and be into football, too. If you were into art, then you were seen as an absolute pansy, and there was no way you'd be admitted to the guys' world of football.

Generally I draw every day just to keep my hand in. I draw while I'm sitting on the Tube or in restaurants. Just doodling things and people I see.

I always thought it was funny that my grandparents had bought a ticket to New York and ended up in Glasgow.

I've had very bleak experiences in hospitals, but they were also sometimes very funny.

I'm just physically stupid.

The British film industry has always tried to sell itself as something rather sophisticated. It's almost as if it thinks it is by royal command. It has always tried to claim the high ground, not only over Hollywood but over the whole of humanity!

I lived through a golden period where society felt that it was good to help people who didn't have a great deal of money fulfil their potential.

My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.

A year after winning the Oscar, almost to the day, I was directing a dog food commercial.

I think all actors experience ups and downs.

The higher your profile, the more people want you.

I found American actors quite scary because they're brilliant actors and brilliantly funny, and they never stopped once you wound them up... off they went and they just deliver fantastic stuff.

I was just interested in directing. So I just kept having a go at trying to write little scripts and get things together, and my wife just had a slip of the tongue and said, "Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life" when she meant to say "Frank Capra's." There it is right there. That's a gag that we could make into something.

I think the most extraordinary thing about fans is the level of excellence that they show in the work that they do. I mean, if you go onto the internet and see some of the fan videos that have been put together, they're just extraordinary; they could be programmes in their own right.

I think acting, oftentimes it's not about lines, it's about spaces in between lines and expressions on people's faces and their relationships. You can tell your own story, or a story that you're interested in, even if the lines don't necessarily point you in that direction.

My family has to be very patient living with me, if you're playing a part that's not you. You have to get it right.

I think that people like the idea that fans are sort of slightly eccentric and strange, but generally I've just found them very creative and warm and cheerful.

I knew Richard E. Grant, and I went to him and said "Would you like to [play Kafka in the film]?" and he said yeah, and then suddenly I had all these people who were happy to come along. We got a little bit of money from Scottish Screen to pay for it. I got so many favors because I knew people in the business. I was in a remarkably good position. I got so many favors from people. I got the Monty Python technical people.

I was amazed to go Oscar and win it. It was fantastic getting up on the stage there and looking down. I thought, "That guy looks like Steve Martin, and that guy's like Arnold Schwarzenegger." But it was Steve Martin, and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then they have this terrible kind of conveyor belt backstage - literally - where they take you to this big hangar where the world's press are gathered, and they make you stand on a stage, and they introduce you.

If you actually have to engage with somebody who's superior to you and actually battle with them, struggle with them, I think it's more interesting, and funnier for the audience.

There is no greater symbol of the artistic spirit of Scotland than the Mackintosh building. But more than that it is a symbol of where art belongs, rising as it does out of the heart of a great city. A mighty castle on a hill, it is a part of me, and of all Glaswegians.

We had our British background of traditional theatre behind us.

Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.

I'm a huge fan of The Sopranos, and suddenly, you find yourself going one-to-one with this guy who you've been watching for years, watching every flicker in his eye and every detail on his face.

I'd say, don't listen to what anyone says: you're good. Go put your anorak on. Get your thick bottle-top specs. Draw your little cartoons and your comics and keep writing to the BBC.

I wish I'd known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth.

It'll be sad not to be Doctor Who anymore because that's an incredible thing to wake up in the morning and go, 'Oh, I'm still Doctor Who!' And you can go and blow up some monsters, and that's how you spend your day. And also when you walk around people don't see Peter anymore, he's not here, it's Doctor Who they see and he gets many more smiles than I do. It'll be sad to say goodbye.

Every viewer who ever turned on Doctor Who has taken him into his heart. He belongs to all of us.

Keep going and don't give up. You're doing wonderfully. You'll know how to fly this thing eventually.

One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week. So the events that occur are rarely life-changing. But with film, you can say that this thing only happened once; this is a major thing that happened to these people.

The older I get, the more I think lightness of touch is an incredibly difficult thing to do.