Steve Coogan Quotes

No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren't religious, you can learn things from religious people.

When you tour you become more intimate with your audience. It's like I need reassurance that they like me or at least find me relevant. And that I can still do it.

I'm just a good Catholic boy - I do naughty things and feel guilty about them.

Guide dogs for the blind. It's cruel really, isn't it? Getting a dog to lead a man round all day. Not fair on either of them.

The great thing is that the funny side of getting old is fuel for my comedy.

I have never wanted to be famous, as such - fame is a by-product.

I am lucky to be in a profession that is not age dependent.

I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway.

Convoy? Michael, you're hanging around with a man who uses a collective term for a single vehicle.

When Americans talks about Europeans, they are thinking Britain and the rest of Europe. When we [ Britains] talk about Europeans, we talk about everywhere else.

I used to do stuff at college. I could do voices. I could make some people laugh. I wasn't the class clown, but I knew I had this skill.

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

We're all a bit of a dick. It's the human condition. Nothing to be afraid of.

I'm gonna hump ya. Like Deputy Dog ... Would hump ya.

In my mind God made Adam and Eve, he didn't make Adam and Steve.

If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

When I play myself, I want to be a slightly better person. It just agrees. Everything I play about myself is kind of true, but it's amplified. We all edit, don't we? If you're self-aware, you stop yourself - you know how to behave properly.

Knowing about comedy has helped me with the drama. To see people laugh, it's like there are moments of catharsis in the middle of sadness.

Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.

You really have got lots of issues! Yeah, of 'What Car Magazine'!

I don't want to go around making everyone else agree with me. I don't feel the need to do that.

My father worked for IBM. My mother raised us kids. There were six of us, and a couple of extra foster kids at any given time.

London audiences are tricky, too. They don't laugh as much as the Northern audiences because, and I hate to say this, they are a bit cleverer normally, and they are picking up on all the little details and listening more carefully.

I want my work to be judged, not me.

I'm not turned away from the church through anger, although I have criticisms of it. It's through finding affirmation of life and illumination of life through creativity and art.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

I always find it easier to portray myself as being unlikeable and idiotic; to actually play a character that is likeable and engages the audience is far more difficult. It's a more subtle kind of challenge.

I like the British public. There is something in this country called tall poppy syndrome. You're good but you're not that good, pal, OK? The natural state of our nation is slightly miserable, and probably the healthier for it. In America you don't get a key down the side of your Bentley ...

I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.

Two thousand years ago, the Holy family had a ramble from Nazareth to Bethlehem - in much the same way as I'm having a ramble from Norwich to Swaffham. Although I'm not comparing myself to Jesus - I don't want to get bogged down in that whole controversy again.

I enjoy comedy but it can become wearisome.

I'm getting older , so I'm quieting down a bit.

Actually the best thing I did was to get thrown out by my wife. She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot.

The best feeling in the world is performing in front of a live audience who like what you're doing. I can understand why people become dictators just because of the thrill they get making the speeches.

If the person who can effectively sanction ill-conceived wars can play the electric guitar, which is a symbol of rebellion, then that whole worldview becomes confused.

People regurgitate the same old cliches and it becomes like a photocopy of a photocopy of something that's vaguely interesting.

Hitler was nice to dogs

I think it's always funny when you see kids do Shakespeare.

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.

I'm not Mother Teresa. But I'm not Frank Bough, either. I am getting older and a bit more sensible. I'm not going to be popping up in dungeons every six months. If you catch me preaching fidelity while I am shagging chickens then throw the book at me. Otherwise, leave me alone.

Far from being this big, booming voice, the Daily Mail is just a little man behind a curtain.

I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy. Making people laugh one moment and the next making them feel really uncomfortable.

Big comedy is good, I like things that are big, but good comedy has to be truthful I think and has to reflect some sort of reality.

That was liquid football

The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous.

It is not true that sex degrades women ... if it is any good.

As soon as I see period costume, I turn off. It's like hearing drama on Radio 4.

It's like aversion therapy. You keep doing scenes over and over again with three women in the bed with you, and we had to do them all in one week. Three girls would step out and another three girls would step into the bed.It sounds like a fantasy but by the end of it, I just wanted to go for a hike on my own in the north of England, in the hills. Because it became a sort of "be careful what you wish for" kinda thing.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

There's never any graffiti in the hotel. Although in the Gents a couple of weeks ago I did see someone had drawn a lady's part. Quite detailed. The guy obviously had talent.

I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.

Most of all I don't want to be bored. That's why I'd rather do something that has some sort of ambition, that risks failing, rather than make safer, more comfortable choices.

Hacking into a victim of crime's phone is a sort of poetically elegant manifestation of a modus operandi the tabloids have.

If you do something very successful, you will then be defined by it.

If you got the balls to follow something through, you can end up being the coolest, smartest guy in the room, because you've literally put your ass on the line.

I don't think I'm kind of universally known. I think in the indie world I'm probably better known than in some mainstream Hollywood terms.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

The one thing that gives you faith is the fact that people can be apart physically but they can still have an emotional connection.

What terrifies me is that I might somehow endorse that view so people think they don't have to read books anymore.

I like to do movies that provoke rather than reinforce conservative values.

I don't apologize for my behavior anymore. Whatever I do or don't do shouldn't matter. Moral certainty is dangerous. Moral certainty is what makes people go to war unnecessarily and illegally. Morality, as any halfway intelligent human being would tell you, is a very subjective thing.

I'm 47, my girlfriend's 33; she's 14 years younger than me, back of the net!

What I don't like is dance music or hip hop or any of that sort of thing.

I knew lots of Irish ladies in my life who would say daft things and then would just say something incredibly truthful in a very simple way with simple language - a few well chosen words that would take an intellectual five minutes to express. I like that.

I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.

I don't like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.

I don't think there's anything outside what comedy can address.

When I see friends from school I think they've all grown old and I've stayed the same.

I like the transience of Klimt paintings.

There were days when we used to say, what was in today's paper is tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper.When I became successful, I enjoyed myself a little.

I always think that, even when people behave badly, if you like something deep inside them, then there is a tiny bit of nobility - they wish they could be good.

Even great people are always slightly disappointing, which is generally what makes them interesting.

Actors say they do their own stunts for the integrity of the film but I did them because they looked like a lot of fun.

Actually, bizarrely, in America, I get more appreciation from the odd, unusual stuff I've done, almost because I'm not, if you like, famous in America as I am in England.

If you're driving your car and someone winds the window down and gives you the finger and calls you an asshole, instead of giving him the finger back and calling him an asshole back, you just pull a funny face, and he doesn't know how to react to that, because you're using different rules.

Got my fungal foot powder? Ah, it's a lifesaver, you know. I'd effectively be disabled if it weren't for these.

There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.