Hugh Laurie > Quotes

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. ”
― Hugh Laurie

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie

“This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Happiness is the twinkle in your grandmother's eye as you reverse the tractor off her legs.”
― Hugh Laurie

“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. ”
― Hugh Laurie

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“I think you're a dangerous, corrupt, lying piece of nine-day-old mosquito shit.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“People are more open about seeking help these days. They recognise 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. ”
― Hugh Laurie

“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

“She turned towards me and narrowed her eyes...narrowed them horizontally, not vertically.”
― 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, The Gun Seller

“Because, what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.
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 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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Pain is an event. It happens to you, and you deal with it in whatever way you can.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Keep on being yourself.”
― Hugh Laurie

“[...] and as I walked, I tried to see the funny side. It wasn't easy, and I'm still not sure that I managed it properly, but it's just something I like to do when things aren't going well. Because what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“I looked at her and sighed. In another world, I thought to myself, it might have worked. In another world, in another universe, in another time, as two quite different people, we really might have been able to put all of this behind us, take off to some sun-drenched Caribbean island, and have sex and pineapple juice, non-stop, for a year.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“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.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“It’s good that you feel bad,’ she said, after some thought. Not much thought, obviously, but some. ‘If you felt nothing, it would mean there is no love, no passion. And we are nothing without passion.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“The first two rooms were in the same state as the corridor. Dirty, and piled with junk. Dead typewriters, telephones, three-legged chairs. I was reflecting on the fact that there is nothing in any of the world’s great museums that looks quite as ancient as a ten-year-old photocopier, when I heard a noise.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive. Being House is like flying, too. He's free of the gravity of what people think.”
― Hugh Laurie

“Of course, they hadn’t really been happier at all. But they ‘d been days, and they’d had Sarah in them, and that was near enough.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“I didn’t really know the answer to this myself, but saying that wasn’t going to get me off the hook. I started talking without any clear idea of what was going to come out.
‘Because sex causes more unhappiness than it gives pleasure,’ I said. ‘Because men and women want different things, and one of them always ends up being disappointed. Because I don’t get asked much, and I hate asking. Because I’m not very good at it. Because I’m used to being on my own. Because I can’t think of anymore reason.’ I paused for breath.
‘All right,’ said Ronnie. She turned and started walking backwards so she could get a good view of my face. ‘Which of those is the real one?’
‘B,’ I said, after a bit of thought.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“There weren’t many good things to be said or felt about my situation. Not many at all. But the rule is that after any engagement, won or lost, you replay it in you mind to see how much you can learn. So that’s what I did...”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that’s the horrible truth of it. (...)

This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days - because sameness is our religion and heretics are no more welcome now than they ever were - but I’m going to acknowledge it, because I’ve always felt that humility before the facts is the only thing that keeps a rational man together. Be humble in the face of facts, and proud in the face of opinions, as George Bernard Shaw once said.

He didn’t, actually. I just wanted to put some authority behind this observation of mine, because I know you’re not going to like it.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“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, The Gun Seller

“Allez-vous au plus vite - crac ! Oh, désolé, laissez-moi vous mettre une attelle, monsieur.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Je suppose que quelqu'un, quelque part, le connaît - l'a baptisé ainsi, l'a gueulé dans l'escalier à l'heure du petit-déj”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Rayner avait sans doute une dizaine d'années de plus que moi. Ce qui ne pose en soi aucun problème. J'entretiens des relations chaleureuses, sans bras cassés, avec quantité de personnes de cet âge.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Plus laid aussi qu'un parking”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Chacun en leur temps, briques, couteaux, bouteilles et divers arguments rationnels avaient rebondi sur cette vaste surface en ne laissant que d'infimes empreintes entre des pores profonds et très espacés.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Nous avons échangé des civilités. Mi-scénario hollywodien, mi-bonne société. Elle a commencé à hurler, puis essayé de me mordre la main.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“-Qui t'as dit que je ne le savais pas ?
-Tu le sais ?
-Non.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Une chemise si blanche qu'elle devait être branchée sur le secteur.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“Chier, parce que tout partait de travers. L'éclairage, la bande-son, l'action.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller