Hugh Laurie Quotes

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.

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

Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be.

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.

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

I think that’s the lesson you learn in life. As you get older you realize you’re never going to grow up and you’re never going to be ready. And you may, as well, do things now, don’t wait

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

There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now.

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.

Every day is the opportunity for a better tomorrow.

Winning a rowing race is not like winning anything else. Here's my theory: you're facing backwards, so you're looking at the people you're beating--and there's something exquisite about that.

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

Russian vodka is OK if you need to clean the oven. For drinking, it must henceforth be Polish.

I think classical music tuition is, well, was when I was a child, was an abomination. I think in some ways it is one of life's great tragedies for everybody who gives up an instrument.

It's a holy city for music.

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

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

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.

I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think - I don't just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it.

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.

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.

Keep on being yourself.

I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away.

Acting is largely about putting on masks, and music is about removing them.

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

I never was someone who was at ease with happiness.

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

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

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.

It gets on top of me and I get frustrated.

They, all of them, work incredibly hard to make me seem clever and heroic, neither of which I am.

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.

I wouldn't be able to act like Al Pacino or play the piano like Dr. John, But I could probably act better than Dr. John and play the piano better than Al Pacino.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I suppose actors crave attention of some kind or they have suffered some form of arrested development and are still living in a sort of child's fantasy existence at some level in their psyche.

When school friends would think about appearing on stage as the most frightening, the most awful, intimidating experience ever, I knew that it was something I could do.

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.

Perseverance does not equal worthiness. Next time you want to get my attention, wear something fun. Low-riding jeans are hot.

Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive.

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

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

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.

We put this 15-year old girl on the cover of a fashion magazine, and tell everyone she is the epitome of sexual perfection, but we jail anyone who touches her for another three years.

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

One thing House needs Wilson for is vanity. He needs someone to laugh at his jokes.

I rowed for Cambridge. I was pretty good at that.

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.