Arthur Smith Quotes

Give me the new thing and give it to me now. I don't want that old thing - I've seen it, heard it, bought it, slept with it, loved it, but now I'm bored with the old thing and I'm gagging for the new stuff.

My eyebrows could do with a trim.

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

Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.

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.

Sometimes it's good to do something that you've never done before, so yesterday, I went out to buy Elton John's new album.

Every generation of children has its private hero.

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

I've noticed that my resolutions involve me not doing stuff that I wasn't going to do anyway so here's something more positive. I'm going to retrain as a Latin teacher in a provincial public school.

A female friend who caught me watching Fashion TV reckons its audience is largely made up of slobbering men who are just taking a break from the appalling Men & Motors channel. I don't agree.

Only the pun remains. The pun, beloved of Shakespeare, children and tabloid headline-writers, is normally eschewed in the modern, sophisticated circles in which I move.

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've always been interested in art.

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

The Romantic poets were the prototype ramblers, and I've often found myself following in their footsteps - although perhaps not all of their footsteps since a typical walk for Samuel T. Coleridge might last two days and cover 145km.

Travel books are, by and large, boring. They lodge uncomfortably between fact, fiction and autobiography.

The book may be garbage, but if it weighs in at a kilo or more, I stand before its author in awe.

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

I've been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I've come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.

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

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.

Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.

A savage review is much more entertaining for the reader than an admiring one; the little misanthrope in each of us relishes the rubbishing of someone else.

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

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

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

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

Theatricals can be irritating, but will provide a better night out than mobile phone salespeople.

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.

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

Someone once described me as the Zelig of comedy, and I think I know what he means.

Sky and clouds and trees and little figures relaxing in the perfect rural rhythm of their surroundings: these are the staples of a Gainsborough landscape.

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.

I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.

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.

I myself am pathetically impressed when I meet writers of very long novels. How can they spend so many hundreds of hours at the miserable, lonely pastime of creating fiction?

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.