Hugh Laurie Quotes

1. We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women, and I thought I'd better pick my words carefully when describing a gender I didn't belong to, want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that's what they want. That's the goal. Men do not have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals. "Bollocks," said Ronnie. "That, of course, is the other main difference".

2. Keep on being yourself.

3. (on Cambridge) I went there to row. I'll be blunt with it. It's been ten years, and I think the admissions tutor can take it now...but that's really what I went for, and anthropology was the most convenient subject to read while spending eight hours a day on the river.

4. It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement.

5. (on the Oxford-vs.-Cambridge Boat Race) The year was 1980, I was #4 in this particular encounter, and the result was a loss by Cambridge by a distance of five feet, which is something which I will carry to my grave...in fact, I shouldn't really say this, because I still to this day wouldn't want to give any pleasure or satisfaction to the opposing crew. But yes, it's true, it was a very bitter defeat.

6. I hate menus, I hate choosing food. I just want to be brought. Bring me dinner!

7. (on picking up his new hobby) Boxing is fascinating. It's good for the soul to be made to feel clumsy. I swank around during the week thinking I'm a big cheese, but you don't feel like that when you're in the ring with a chap who knows what he's doing. It's ritual humiliation. I'm going to be slugged about and probably killed, but I love it and have to do something to keep fit.

8. I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.

9. I picked a reverence for medicine because I rather hero-worshiped my father (a former doctor), and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't admire crystals and chewing willow bark and herbal remedies.

10. My dad gave me my first bike at 16. I soon fell off and was in a wheelchair for weeks. I haven't fallen since.

11. (on his late father's reaction to his character Dr. Gregory House) He would be absolutely appalled. He was an endlessly polite, generous and soft-spoken man. He was no pushover, but he would never hurt, shock or outrage people just for the hell of it. At the same time, I hope he would be entertained and see that science and logic are like a religion to House. He'd approve of that.

12. Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless.

13. (on what he misses about England) The buildings and the cruelty. They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them. L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally.

14. Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.





15. I travel to work on my motorcycle, so it's jeans, boots and a brown Aero leather jacket that weighs as much as I do. If it were black, it would seem like I've got a (Marlon Brando) idea going on, which I don't.

16. Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.


17. (on raising his daughter) Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.

18. I think you're a dangerous, corrupt, lying piece of nine-day-old mosquito shit.

19. (his speech after winning a Golden Globe for "House M.D.") I am absolutely speechless. Seriously, I don't have a speech. People are falling all over themselves to send you free shoes and free cuff links and colonic irrigations for two. Nobody ever offers you a free acceptance speech. There just seems to be a gap in the market. I would love to be able to pull out a speech by Dolce & Gabbana.

20. I don't talk like House, or walk like him. I certainly don't think like him. I don't like to think for more than 15 minutes at a stretch actually; I am a fragile flower.

21. Guilt I can do. If (I have) any expertise at all, it's in the area of guilt. I have a black belt in guilt. If you ever want a guilt-off, the next time we meet let's see how we match up. I'm pretty confident in that area.

22. In books, day breaks, and night falls. In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over.

23. (on living in America while filming "House M.D.") I do feel very foreign there, as if I'm on safari, looking at the exotic animals and the way they behave. Then again America is made up of people who don't feel American until they do, so I'm not alone in that.

24. To be a head boy, you have to be very clever, you have to be a scholar, and I was never a scholar in any shape or form.

25. (when asked if living in America would make him any less pessimistic or miserable) Oh, I hope nothing would ever do that. I won't let go of my roots.

26. There's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing into a metaphor.




27. I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.

28. Pain is an event. It happens to you, and you deal with it in whatever way you can.

29. Something in me says you shouldn't have toys.




30. People will survive, and they will find happiness. Happiness only comes when you're not looking for it.

31. People are more open about seeking help these days. They recognize the fact that the alternative to having a shrink is that you bore your friends stupid. So I figured that I might as well give someone 100 bucks an hour to hear my woes. At least someone can make a living out of listening to my tedious problems. 

32. (recalling his father winning a gold medal in rowing at the 1948 Olympics in London) He was in a coxless pair with a man called Jack Wilson. I've got a fantastic picture on my desk of the two of them getting their medals on a pontoon at Henley. I imagine they were playing the national anthem and my dad is very rigid, "this is the way to behave", and Jack Wilson is loose and groovy and looks like he should be mixing a martini. I sometimes wished my father could take that pleasure in himself.

33. Just because it's a bad job doesn't mean I need to do it badly.

34. (after he received his 2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards) I actually had a 100 dollars on James Spader, this is just not my night.

35. To be able to pretend to be something that I'm frankly not is very liberating and exciting.

36. (commenting on "The Paper Soldier", his sequel to his best-selling "The Gun Seller") My second novel will be coming out two years ago.

37. It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

38. I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

39. She turned towards me and narrowed her eyes…narrowed them horizontally, not vertically.

40. Americans have never really caught on to the idea of sheep. I think they think it's cissy.

41. Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.

42. (on living at the Chateau Marmont during the first season of "House M.D.") I was so convinced the whole thing was going to fail, I couldn't contemplate committing to any long-term arrangement. I thought a hotel was a safe bet.

43. (on performing with an American accent) It's as if you're playing left-handed. Or like everyone else is playing with a tennis racket and you have a salmon.

44. (was he shocked at the success of "House M.D.") I still am. There are a lot of days when I feel as if I have been woken from a coma and told six years have gone by, and I have no awareness of it. Is Queen Elizabeth II still on the throne? Do we still drive on the left? Do we still have pounds?

45. The only good thing I've ever noticed about money, the only positive aspect of an otherwise pretty vulgar commodity, is that you can use it to buy things.

46. (on working nine-to-ten-hour days, five days a week in Hollywood) It's a way of living that, had you described it to me 10 years ago, I would have just found absurd beyond belief, inconceivable. But here we are. Yes, there were plenty of times when it was pretty overwhelming, I think for everybody. Like anybody completely absorbed in a single thing, it's rather unhealthy. It's the sort of thing you can do for a certain period of time - in a sort of emergency state - but you can't live like that indefinitely because you start popping rivets. Look, it sounds like I'm moaning. I am constantly aware of my good fortune. But the thing is, almost nothing in this life is as easy as it looks. I did work very, very hard - I do still - but it has been very rewarding, very enjoyable, and I work with a terrific bunch of people. So I feel blessed.

47. (on having children) They do make you less egotistical. I still manage to think about myself 98 per cent of the time, but at least there is a little window where others can impinge.

48. I used to worry much more about the prospect of failure. That 200 people were going to be out of a job. That shame and disgrace would attach, and I would have my acting uniform stripped from me.

49. I run six-to-eight miles a day, plus weights and aerobics in the lunch hour. I also lie a lot, which keeps me thin.

50. Yes, I still like him ("House M.D.") very, very much. I know he has problems, and he is not necessarily a good man. But I realized long ago that one doesn't only like good people. Sometimes one doesn't even like good people.

51. It is the middle of December now, and we are about to travel to Switzerland - where we plan to ski a little, relax a little, and shoot a Dutch politician a little.

52. I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.





53. I do actually like Los Angeles. Partly because I was told I wouldn't.

54. Humility was a cult in my family. I only got it out of my father by accident when he was very old that he had won an Olympic gold medal.

 55. (what does he like most about "House M.D."?) I suppose I am drawn to people who worry, who are tortured. I find I am always faintly suspicious of happy people. I always think there is something going wrong or missing somewhere. They would probably argue that I am the one with the thing missing, and that may be so. But the fact that he is not happy makes a lot of his mis­demeanours more forgivable. If someone is behaving badly, yet remains unhappy and tortured, the bad behavior is very often its own punishment, so it's hard to be too upset by it.

56. I couldn't imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much.


57. (on the possibility of staying in LA after "House M.D.") I can certainly imagine it, in a way I couldn't have done before. It held no appeal for me before, but I do have an affection for the place now. Maybe once the show finishes, I will see it in a different way. For now, I'm in a gilded cage.

58. I grew up with an impatience with the anti-scientific. So I'm a bit miffed with our current love affair with all things Eastern. If I sneeze on the set, 40 people hand me echinacea. But I'd no sooner take that than eat a pencil. Maybe that's why I took up boxing. It's my response to men in white pajamas feeling each other's chi.

59. In life you don't regret the things you do, you regret the things you don't do. 





60. I didn't realize House would be the central character, more the bitter comic relief appearing occasionally. I relish his wounded nature - the lameness, the scarred Byronic hero.

61. (on jamming in a jazz club in New Orleans) I can't deny it was, without a doubt, the most frightening thing I've done. To stand up and play music to an audience is a very, very daunting but wonderful experience. Many things in life are daunting and wonderful if your survive them. Being attacked by a lion is probably brilliant, but the survival part is important.

62. As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?

63. I sometimes think that in this Youtube age - God, I sound like such an old fart - history has gone vertical rather than horizontal. You can click on "St. James Infirmary", let's say (and) see a hip-hop version of that done three months ago or hear Louis Armstrong from nearly 100 years ago. And there's almost no sense of separation or context, or of a progression through time.

64. I don't have a single complete show or movie or anything else that I could look at and say: "Nailed that one." But endless dissatisfaction is, I suppose, what gets us out of bed in the morning.


65. (on performing the blues) Let the record show that I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American South. I know how it must look. I suppose, in my defence, I was trying to get people to examine what authenticity means. Is it authentic to have American actors playing Shakespeare? Or indeed to have an Englishman play an American doctor?

66. (as presenter at the 2008 BAFTA Awards) Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be. The point is that it should be. The original screenplay is the most precious commodity of all. In the original screenplay the writer creates the heart, the mind, the skeleton, the sinew, the epithelial membrane, if you will, of the show.


67. I feel like a hostage to fortune. Not that I am complaining. I wanted to play the role. But in truth I didn't think the show would be such a success. OK, I thought it would fail. Not because it was bad. I was confident it was good, but plenty of good things just sort of wither on the vine.

68. I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.

69. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to simply walk down the street. In New York, I dashed in to buy a big pair of sunglasses to conceal myself, but the guy behind the counter shouted: "Hey! It's Dr. House."

70. Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive. When I ride through Beverly Hills in the early morning, and all the sprinklers have turned off, the scents that wash over me are just heavenly. Being House is like flying, too. You're free of the gravity of what people think.

71. One of the principal goals in my life has been to avoid embarrassing my children by doing the job I do. I hope I've managed to do that, and I hope that, with the job I'm in now, they are, if not proud, at least unembarrassed by it. I must say, my three are most agreeable children, who do nothing but delight me.

72. I feel like I'm working on an oil rig right now. I'm away from home a lot.

73. Seems to me that this business, for actors anyway, is not so much about whether or not you do good work. It's about whether or not you get the chance to do good work.

74. You hope that your teenage self would like and forgive your 50-year-old self.

75. Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.

76. Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

77. I have resolved to pick one novel and just read it over and over again for the rest of my life, because I cannot remember anything anymore.

78. To me, he's a hero…He's not polite. He's not someone you want to take home to meet your mother, necessarily. This is a guy in search of truth. Incidentally, that truth one day could save your life or the life of someone you love. That's a heroic thing.

79. Now, my mom always said two wrongs don't make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.



80. I have been instrumental in banning bottled water on the set. It hasn't gone that well with the crew…so I replaced it with tequila.

81. I don't take off my helmet a lot of the time - that's one of the really good things about riding a bike. I can go all over the place and no one knows who I am.


82. This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed.

83. I personally believe that the iPod is a frankly corrosive device because it encourages you to surround yourself with your favorites. The whole idea of a playlist is to surround yourself with your favorite things, and the interesting thing is that when you do that, they cease to be your favorites.


84. I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.

85. I am a coffee fanatic. Once you go to proper coffee, you can't go back. You cannot go back.





86. Happiness is the twinkle in your grandmother's eye as you reverse the tractor off her legs.

87. (on his role in "Maybe Baby") I was only allowed to wear a sock. But the only way to do the shot was to be naked. It's been my worst nightmare ever since the showers at school - I couldn't believe I was living it. 

88. Believe it or not, perhaps I don't show it much, or well, but I think I like people.



89. I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give.


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