Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by Victoria Coren Mitchell - Page 2

It may be vain to care too much how you look, but it is impolite to care too little. You do a generous thing for the world when you present yourself properly.

Reverse-parking in a small space is one of those high-pressure situations where a critical, watching eye becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm convinced we go to school at the wrong time. I'd have been delighted, aged 12, to get out into the world and earn some money doing something menial.

They say multitasking is a female trait, but it's not about gender; it's about personality type.

I play quite an old-fashioned game of poker. It's a lot about getting a sense of people at the table rather than the maths of the thing.

I like snow, but I don't want to live in Siberia.

I'm not a luddite. Science, computers, medicine, they're all great. But nature is context. That which we can't control. Its constant mortality and immortality is an answer to the terror of finite existence. It reassures the soul.

If you find it difficult to draw a neat line with an eyeliner pencil, start with a big, thick, wonky line and then reduce it with eye makeup remover. This is serious advice. I do this every single time I put makeup on.

I don't really think of myself as stupid - but then, who does?

The Highway Code can't be that difficult to understand, and yet my brain seems to treat it as a set of nuclear fission instructions in Old Japanese.

The phrase 'working mum' makes me nervous.

It is weird, the relationship between people and food. It's always deeper than you think. It always stands for something else.

Sometimes, the only reason to watch anything acclaimed is on the off-chance you really hate it.

School is supposed to civilise us, to tame our wilder instincts and teach us how to be more sensible, more knowledgeable, and cleverer.

I can't believe that 100% of the people who stand in art galleries looking at art are thinking, 'Well, here I am, looking at art.' They must be having some sort of other, unselfconscious experience.

I've never seen any 'Star Wars' movie.

It's not that I can't find art beautiful. I just don't know what to do, standing there in the gallery. I don't know what to think about. Once I've seen it, I've seen it; that takes about two seconds. I am interested and then immediately bored, immediately.

I know schools don't have money for everything, but I wish they could all have a couple of violins for kids to try; a couple of cellos, perhaps a bassoon.

I'm just a poker player who does a bit of TV.

Women are under-represented in TV comedy for a variety of reasons, the hackneyed 'fear that women aren't funny' being one of them.

A long time ago, my grandfather used to play blackjack with me, when I was very small, and I quite enjoyed that.

When I met my husband, he had never spent more than £10 on a haircut.

I dreamed of growing up and becoming a zookeeper.

I pay higher premiums because my speeding points spell 'recklessness' to the insurance company, but you can't imagine how risk-averse I am at the wheel. I only go over 30 at all because it's dangerous to drive too much slower than everyone else.

Being bored by clothes shopping feels smart and intellectual: 'Ooh, get me, insufficiently entertained by racks of skinny jeans; my mind is on higher things.'

You can always recognise my restless peers and me; we are the people whose feet you hear tramping along the pavement at the other end of the phone line because we can only make calls while moving.

I've never danced while driving, nor put on makeup.

When I was at school, I got into trouble quite often.

Nature made your eyebrows like that for a reason. I don't know the reason. Some people say it's to do with keeping rain out of monkeys' eyes. Whatever. The point is, if you try to redesign your eyebrows with tweezers and pens, it will look terrible.

I don't quite comprehend what Kim Kardashian is, where she came from, or why we talk about her.

Video piracy is among the most irritating aspects of modern life for those who work in the film business. Adverts telling you not to commit video piracy are among the most irritating aspects of modern life for those who don't.

Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise... is the motto of people who are in the business of selling moisturisers. Your body is already 60% water. If that's not moist enough for you, sit in a puddle.

My speeding offences (whether caught or not) are always in situations where the speed limit is 30, but I think it's 40. And I'm never doing 40, always a careful 37.

I have quite a good card sense. My grandmother taught me to play bridge, so I had a reasonable sense of the cards and how they work.

Some of us find 'relaxing' to be, in itself, nerve-racking. If we aren't doing something useful or, at least, that seems useful, we feel guilty, impatient, and mortal.

London Zoo is amazing. I want to take my child there so that she can feel the awe and wonder I felt (and feel) myself.

I am terrible at doing nothing. I'm not brilliant at doing one thing at a time, either. Ideally, I would fill out my tax return while watching a film; peel potatoes while reading the post; send emails in the bath.

I have cared so much and so little about the cars I've owned.

Never take your makeup off before bed. Sleep in it. That way, you're all ready to go if a hot postman rings the doorbell early.

Makeup is only fun if it's occasional and capricious - just like it's a treat to have an empty day ahead, but it wouldn't be if you were doing 20 years in Parkhurst.

If you want to gnaw greenery in the morning for health reasons, do it in your own home with the curtains drawn.

MY INSPIRATION has always been Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman who smoked and drank every day and died a few years ago at the age of 122. When asked the secret of her longevity, she replied: 'I laugh a lot.' Well you would, wouldn't you.