Top 142 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Coogan - Page 2

The fundamentalists are insistent that they know best. It's a dictatorial attitude towards personal morality, which is a modern creation that came about in the 19th century.

It’s our imperfections that make us vulnerable, make us interesting. How can I make myself a bit of an asshole and still have humanity about it?

I'm gonna hump ya. Like Deputy Dog... Would hump ya.

When it comes to morality, I'd rather have an unfaithful president like Bill Clinton, who tried to reform welfare, than a faithful George Bush who propagated an illegal war on the rest of the world. So that is where my morality stands.

The Bible, undoubtedly, is a mixed bag. I don't see myself coming back to the Church. I do like the tradition. If you come from a strong culture, you can decide what you agree with and what you don't agree with. If you're given a blank canvas, it's almost harder in life.

I like to do movies that provoke rather than reinforce conservative values.

If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater.

Even if I screw up in my personal life, as long as I'm not destroying myself, I just think, "Okay, I screwed up." I'm not Mother Theresa.

I think there's as much profundity and wisdom in Shakespeare, more so in fact, than those in the Bible.

Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.

The important thing is not to be defined by what others think of you.

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

When I play myself, I want to be a slightly better person. It just agrees. Everything I play about myself is kind of true, but it's amplified. We all edit, don't we? If you're self-aware, you stop yourself - you know how to behave properly.

I'm not like a politician that goes around talking about family values. And I can't get fired from being a funny person because I did something that most people are disapproving of. I think people are just obsessed with this morality that people perceive as being the right and wrong way of doing stuff.

Knowing about comedy has helped me with the drama. To see people laugh, it's like there are moments of catharsis in the middle of sadness.

I like the fact that people come together who have shared values, but I don't believe that a man died 2,000 years ago and was crucified on a cross to save me from my original sin.

It may seem like improv because it flows quite naturally, and a little bit of leeway for improvisation is good, but you have to be judicious with it. So it's good, but sometimes people deify it. You can't improvise your way out of a paper hat.

I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.

Guide dogs for the blind. It's cruel really, isn't it? Getting a dog to lead a man round all day. Not fair on either of them.

The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.

I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.

Actually the best thing I did was to get thrown out by my wife. She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot.

It's like aversion therapy. You keep doing scenes over and over again with three women in the bed with you, and we had to do them all in one week. Three girls would step out and another three girls would step into the bed. It sounds like a fantasy but by the end of it, I just wanted to go for a hike on my own in the north of England, in the hills. Because it became a sort of "be careful what you wish for" kinda thing.

I think we all have a slightly gay gene inside us, don't we? It might be 0.00001 per cent as mine is, or one per cent as yours is.

A woman wearing a revealing dress will always be sexier than a naked woman.

Sadly, I can't say the same for my Father, who is probably in a different place - Hell.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

I knew lots of Irish ladies in my life who would say daft things and then would just say something incredibly truthful in a very simple way with simple language - a few well chosen words that would take an intellectual five minutes to express. I like that.

The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous.

I always think that, even when people behave badly, if you like something deep inside them, then there is a tiny bit of nobility - they wish they could be good.

That was liquid football

Two thousand years ago, the Holy family had a ramble from Nazareth to Bethlehem - in much the same way as I'm having a ramble from Norwich to Swaffham. Although I'm not comparing myself to Jesus - I don't want to get bogged down in that whole controversy again.

Comedy can be silly and gross and offensive, as long as there's sort of a point. You can make a joke that, on the face of it, is racist. Ostensibly someone can appear to be racist, but if you know you're making a point about race, and not just being pig-headed, then you can do that. I think some people who don't understand comedy will have a knee-jerk reaction to some stuff, and will always be offended by it because they don't understand it. Some people react to it in a vociferous way, which is unsophisticated, but there's always going to be those people out there.

What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.

I woke with a start. At first I assumed I'd trumped myself awake again.

I don't want to go around making everyone else agree with me. I don't feel the need to do that.

Got my fungal foot powder? Ah, it's a lifesaver, you know. I'd effectively be disabled if it weren't for these.

In England, I've done a whole bunch of stuff where I just make a complete ass of myself. I've been doing it for 20 years, so I just gravitate toward it anyway. I'd rather do that than do the stuff where I'm supposed to be trying to look cool in some way. It's more interesting to me.

All drama teachers are very effusive, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical. Those people don't work in banks and they don't work for pharmaceutical companies. They teach drama, or they may be theatre directors. That's why I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.

I do like to make people cringe. That discomfort, tension, embarrassment, pain - all of those things interest me, and not through some sort of masochistic or sadistic impulse. It illuminates what being a human being is. It taps into what it is to be human more incisively than stuff that's just very pedestrian.

Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.

A friend of mine once said he like his women like his parmesan: strong smelling and shaved. I don't agree with that, but I don't like hairy women.

What terrifies me is that I might somehow endorse that view so people think they don't have to read books anymore.

The irony is, of course, that many of the values that I was raised with, that I think are very important, that I hold dear, are the result of a religious faith.

I've met people who've dismissed me, and then they find out that they like my work, and suddenly their attitude changes toward me. And I think that's very funny and very human. But it's also very unattractive.

I'm really encouraged by Pope Francis, because I think his attitude is totally laudable.

All those people who go around saying Life begins at forty, they're notable by their absence. The nerve.

When Americans talks about Europeans, they are thinking Britain and the rest of Europe. When we [ Britains] talk about Europeans, we talk about everywhere else.

I think I'm good with actors. I like directing actors. I also like to show up and just do an acting gig. Where I'm just a hired gun, I don't have to have an opinion on anything.I never got involved in all this stuff because I wanted to control stuff; I got involved in writing and producing because I wasn't getting interesting acting gigs. In a way I'm grateful that I didn't get interesting roles, because it made me pull my finger out and do some work.

To me, I like and understand ritual and I think it is important. Things that we do that give us comfort are important. Like Christmas, I like to go into a church and hear the carols sung. There's a comfort of actually going inside of a church, I find them serene. They're unchanging.

In my mind God made Adam and Eve, he didn't make Adam and Steve.

I'm not turned away from the church through anger, although I have criticisms of it. It's through finding affirmation of life and illumination of life through creativity and art.

The Church at its best is about empowering the disempowered and giving voice to the dispossessed and not putting a price on everything and not being about the bottom line and not worshipping the market or everything that is material.

If you're driving your car and someone winds the window down and gives you the finger and calls you an asshole, instead of giving him the finger back and calling him an asshole back, you just pull a funny face, and he doesn't know how to react to that, because you're using different rules.

There's never any graffiti in the hotel. Although in the Gents a couple of weeks ago I did see someone had drawn a lady's part. Quite detailed. The guy obviously had talent.

It is not true that sex degrades women... if it is any good.

You really have got lots of issues! Yeah, of 'What Car Magazine'!

There were days when we used to say, what was in today's paper is tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper.When I became successful, I enjoyed myself a little.

Depending on which side of the fence you're on, you could argue that the sexual liberation of the late '60s, led to women being emancipated in some ways. That they found a voice during that time, with feminism. It's complicated.

A lot of people can be very scared about making themselves vulnerable and appearing uncool. I don't really give a damn; as long as it's funny, I'll do it [make fun of myself].