Hugh Laurie Quotes

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don't know why they'd decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture.
It could rain in a room this big.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

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.

— Hugh Laurie

“Music is one of the noblest callings I can think of. It's the highest of all the art forms to me. For example, if my kid said to me, 'I want to give it all up,' whatever it is that they're doing, 'and I want to take my saxophone and go out,' I would say, 'May God go with you. This is a great and noble thing that you're doing.'”

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

I think actors are attracted to the idea of other identities and concealing themselves behind some other identity.

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I really do believe the camera steals the soul. But that may be because I'm worried about my soul. I don't have much of a soul to begin with; I can't afford to lose much.”

— Hugh Laurie

I have always stuck up for Western medicine. You can chew all the celery you want, but without antibiotics, three quarters of us would not be here.

— Hugh Laurie

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.

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“It doesn't rain at all in California. Once a month, a man drives through spraying Evian.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I don't think of myself as funny. I think of myself as rather grave, actually. And I'm suspicious of fun. I never quite know what that is or how to deal with it or how to generate it. That's my fault. I know it's a burden on the people I'm with. It's tiresome.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I don't like the act of talking; it makes me slightly light-headed.”

— Hugh Laurie

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.

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I feel when acting, I am sometimes overly self-conscious; I think, 'Going, no, don't, put your eyebrow back where it was and, you know, turn to the left.' You know, I'm sort of very consciously adopting this character. But with music, I don't know. I found it was a question of just closing my eyes and just sort of letting things come out.”

— Hugh Laurie

“The great trap for non-American actors trying to play Americans, I think, is to start thinking of American-ness as a characteristic. It isn't. It is no more a character trait than height. It is just a physical fact, and that's all there is to it.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“I've never been clever with money. I will buy anything at the top of the market.”

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I was too shy, I think, to sing publicly. It takes a particular kind of person. And when I was young, I was not that person. In the first instance, when a record company said to me, do you want to try and make your record, my first reaction was, no, I'm not worthy - I couldn't possibly, and so on and so forth.”

— Hugh Laurie

“It alarms me to think of all that I have read and how little of it has stayed with me.”

— Hugh Laurie

“The strange thing - and this is one of the advantages of being incredibly shallow and superficial - is that wherever I am, that's sort of home.”

— Hugh Laurie

“The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.”

— Hugh Laurie

“Even the greatest poets, I think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human - I was gonna say mind, but it's actually the entire body. It somehow seems to infuse the entire body.”

— Hugh Laurie

“People choose the paths that grant them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. That's the law of nature, and you defied it.”

— Hugh Laurie

“We went through all the usual exchanges dictated by Hollywood and polite society. She tried to scream and bite the palm of my hand, and I told her to be quiet because I wasn't going to hurt her unless she shouted. She shouted and I hurt her. Pretty standard stuff, really.”

— Hugh Laurie

“So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we're not comparing it with anything.
And anyway, we're all dead, or never born, and the whole thing really is a dream.
There, you see. That's a funny side.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“Well, that obviously wasn't good enough. Not by a long shot. Saying period at the end of something doesn't make it incontrovertible.”

— Hugh Laurie

“He flapped his mouth some more, and then shook himself awake, came to a decision, and starting sneaking huge, theatrical looks around the restaurant, as a way of telling all the other lunchers that I Am Now Going To Give This Man An Important Piece of Paper.”

— Hugh Laurie

“Rayner, I estimated, was ten years older than me. Which was fine. Nothing wrong with that. I have good, warm, non-arm-breaking relationships with plenty of people who are ten years older than me. People who are ten years older than me are, by and large, admirable. But Rayner was also three inches taller than me, four stones heavier, and at least eight however-you-measure-violence units more violent.”

— Hugh Laurie

“He clambered out of the car, eager to show how quickly he could clamber out of cars, and followed at my shoulder as I strode over to the house.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I tried not to look at Micky much, so he'd know straightaway he wasn't the point at issue. But a quick glance told me he was also in his forties, and as thin as a very thin stick. He wore leather backless gloves and a revolver, and probably some clothes as well, but I wasn't really paying attention to them.”

— Hugh Laurie

“I'm not a religious man ... I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others.”

— Hugh Laurie

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

— Hugh Laurie

“It gets on top of me and I get frustrated.”

— Hugh Laurie

It's a holy city for music.

— Hugh Laurie

“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.”

— Hugh Laurie