Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English critic Charlie Brooker.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
Charlton Brooker is an English television presenter, author, screenwriter, producer, satirist and social critic. He is the creator and co-showrunner of the sci-fi drama anthology series Black Mirror, and has written for comedy series such as Brass Eye, The 11 O'Clock Show and Nathan Barley.
I haven't always been the kind of man who plays videogames. I used to be the kind of boy who played videogames.
On 'Black Mirror,' we don't tend to deal with big, powerful people, because when you look at a Weinstein or something, you think, 'Is he capable of feeling anything?'
I can't imagine voluntarily standing beside an F1 track in the rain, watching motorised wedges plastered in corporate decals zooming past at 500mph.
Games get a bad press compared with, say, opera - even though they're obviously better, because no opera has ever compelled an audience member to collect a giant mushroom and jump across some clouds.
People tend to think I'm a lot more earnest than I am.
I like technology, but 'Black Mirror' is more what the consequences are, and it doesn't tend to be about technology itself: it tends to be how we use or misuse it. We've not really thought through the consequences of it.
I can't rank anything. I mean, how could anyone possibly say what their favourite piece of music is? I don't have the ability or the desire to categorise things of that nature.
In the early '80s, the arcade game Pac-Man was twice as popular as oxygen.
I'm looking forward to the 'Twilight Zone' from Jordan Peele... if anyone's gonna reboot the 'Twilight Zone,' then there's the man to do it.
A cupcake is just a muffin with clown puke topping.
We're inseparable, games and I. If you cut me, I'd bleed pixels. Or blood. Probably blood, come to think of it.
We take miracles for granted on a daily basis.
The fashion industry is the worst possible vessel for conveying an ethical message about anything.
I've got no attention span.
I've scaled back my involvement with Twitter; it's too easy to get dragged into an argument.
With 'Hang the DJ,' I was concerned that it was more comedic and much lighter than we normally do for 'Black Mirror.'
When it comes to something like Brexit, I am part of the liberal-media London bubble, and so, to me, voting to leave was madness. My perspective was that it was cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I'm not anti-technology at all, really.
Brexit is a harbinger for Trump, really.
I remember when I realised, as a child, 'That stuff on the TV about nuclear bombs is real! Why isn't everyone running around shouting 'Aaarrgghh'? Why are people still buying bicycle clips?'
I loved 'Get Out.'
All Pixar movies are heartbreaking, aren't they?
The fashion industry is an immense cultural and social blight that only gets a free pass because its would-be detractors are scared it'll start criticising their haircut.
I've got a phobia about throwing up.
We humans are great at creating tools with unforeseen consequences. For instance, when we invented the wheel, we had no way of knowing we were also laying the foundations for the TV show 'Top Gear.'
If someone doesn't respond to a phone call, I think they've died.
Like bankers, top footballers are massively overpaid, but at least you comprehend what they're doing for the money.
I can quickly go to a place where I worry about society spiralling out of control.
I'm extremely neurotic; it's the way my brain is built.
Hopefully, some supervillain threat will come down, and we will have to unite as a species and fire our nukes into the sun or something.
At 16, I was drawing cartoons, and I wanted to carry on being a cartoonist.
Rather than setting yourself a New Year's resolution, why not simply pick a reason for hating yourself for the next 365 days? Takes less time, and it's easier to stick to.
Technology is a tool that has allowed us to swipe around like an angry toddler.
I used to draw comics a lot. I was obsessed with 'The Young Ones,' and was massively into video games, although I was no good at them.
I didn't pass my degree due to never handing in an acceptable dissertation, and while it didn't harm me in the long run, my failure to complete the course properly probably led me to spend the next six years or so coasting, unsure of what to do next.
I think the problem we have as apes is we're asking far bigger questions than we could possibly process.
I liked that sort of thing, those one-off stories like 'Tales of the Unexpected,' 'Hammer House of Horror,' 'The Twilight Zone' and 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents.'
It's hard to think of a single human function that technology hasn't somehow altered, apart perhaps from burping. That's pretty much all we have left.
Humans will always babble. If someone wants to tweet that they can't decide whether to wear blue socks or brown socks, then fair enough. But when sharing becomes automated, I get the heebie-jeebies.
The sole purpose of a crown is to make anyone not wearing one feel like an insignificant pauper. They're obscene to the point of satire.
I wanna do some more goofy comedy stuff; I really enjoyed doing 'A Touch of Cloth.'
People always assume I went to public school, which I didn't, so that immediately puts me somewhere.
The logical quandaries thrown up by well-meaning systems are clearly something that I find darkly amusing.
Calling Batman 'the Dark Knight' is like calling Papa Smurf 'the Blue Patriarch':you're not fooling anyone.
Is hacking ever acceptable? It depends on the motive.
In the age of social media, everyone's a newspaper columnist, exaggerating what they think and feel.
I don't know how, at an age when you're trying to put your identity together, how you cope with the pressure of a performance space, which is what social media is.
If there's no point, then there's no point giving up.
The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of 'SpongeBob SquarePants.'
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat waiters and shop assistants, especially when you are one.
Tinder is the ultimate gamification of romance. It's 'Pokemon Go' for the heart.
I'm quite techy and gadgety.
If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.
'The Twilight Zone' was sometimes shockingly cruel, far crueller than most TV drama today would dare to be.
Videogames are probably my first love.
If you're living in a dystopia, you don't necessarily want to look at another one.
Amplifying body-image issues, profiting from anxiety, and employing virtual slaves in sweatshops are bad enough, but the fashion industry is also actively hastening the destruction of the very Earth we walk on. It insists on launching fresh collections each season, declaring yesterday's range obsolete on a whim.
I liked 'Making A Murderer,' 'Master of None.' 'Stranger Things' I watched along with everyone else in the world. 'Narcos,' I really liked 'Narcos' a lot.
Nothing happens in cricket, ever. Even the highlights resemble a freeze frame.
When you're being earnest, people think you're being sarcastic, and when you're being sarcastic, they think you're being earnest. The moral in all this, of course, is that people should never attempt to communicate.