Arthur Smith Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Every generation of children has its private hero.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.