Arthur smith quotes

I read 'Crime and Punishment' years ago and don't recall the details of it, but I do retain a strong sense of the creeping paranoia and panic.

After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.

The outfits come and go but there is a constant that I like about the catwalk model: the snotty expression.

I couldn't really see the point of having lunch unless it started at 1:00 and ended a week later in Monte Carlo.

It was Julie Burchill who decreed that, beyond a certain age, a man should not be seen in a leather jacket.

I'm an armchair kind of guy, especially when it's raining, which it always is and always will be.

I find it hilarious that there are academics who try to analyse chemical changes in the brains of students while exposing them to gags.

I am 54 and age is slowly writing itself on my face.

Don Quixote's 'Delusions' is an excellent read - far better than my own forthcoming travel book, 'Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.'

I abhor nothing more than bumping into someone I know on the Tube.

Every generation of children has its private hero.

Acting is the most demanding, painful job in the world.

If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s.

The history of the relationship between comedy and swimming is short indeed. Of course it is always funny when someone falls into water, but that's about it.

Obviously I am not bothered about men's fashion - is anyone, apart from Jonathan Ross?

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world.

Global warming, the ongoing destruction of the planet, Third World debt, the uselessness of the railways, the takeover by the corporations, the scary George Bush person: all these things are important and should be animating me into outrage. Yet somehow they do not.

My eyebrows could do with a trim.

I see my large nose, like half an avocado. I broke it falling downstairs when I was six, and it now resembles a large blob of play-dough.

My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.

Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may originally have been 10 hilarious one-liners.

It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance.

The moon puts on an elegant show, different every time in shape, colour and nuance.

About every four years, someone says to me, "I've got a friend who looks exactly like you." What can you say to this?

The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.

Acting in a stage play is like working the evening shift in an office.

An uninspiring canvas becomes a glamorous masterpiece when it is reattributed to a better-known artist.

I like doing things I haven't learnt about yet. I've always been interested in art, and I love doing art.

It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.

If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk happy for a long time, fall in love; happy forever, take up gardening.

Listening to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 is the most miserable thing any human being can do, but attending awards ceremonies isn't far behind.

The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up.