Telly Quotes

Arsenal play pretty-boy football. Good to watch on the telly, but there's no real grit in their play. ~ Karl Wiggins

'Doctor Who' was my first telly job, and before that I did a lot of theatre in education, children's theatre. ~ Sophie Aldred

I was like Elvis "The Pelvis" Presley on Ed Sullivan, I tells ya, punished for the crime of being sexy. (him on the telly , me in a dingy alley ... any analogy will break down under scrutiny.) ~ Russell Brand

I think if you've got a good idea it will stand out in one of the different mediums. For example, something might happen to me today and it could be something to talk about tomorrow on the radio, or I can write about it, or perhaps it will be best suited to telly. ~ Danny Wallace

We've got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You're getting spoiled, my girl! ~ Roald Dahl

It's odd, because I used to see pictures, on telly or wherever, of what I now know to be Shaftesbury Avenue and I used to wonder what that amazing street with all the lights was. Well, now I know. I think when you get a wee taste of something, it maybe isn't what you thought it was. ~ Shirley Henderson

I came from a tough neighborhood. I used to be a 'dirty Greek.' ~ Telly Savalas

At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly. ~ Mark Haddon

It was clear they weren't getting any information out of Ian tonight. She, Bones, and Cat followed as Spade supported Ian, almost carrying him up the stairs to then dump him on the bed in a guest room. Before you go, mate, turn on the telly. Something raunchy, too. Think I'll rub one off before I sleep. ~ Jeaniene Frost

'Dad,' said Jack one day. 'When you're on the telly, d'you think people are laughing with you or at you?'
The question had obviously been bothering him for a while.
'Y'know what,' I said to him, 'as long as they're laughing, I don't care.'
'But why, Dad? Why would you want to be a clown?'
'Because I've always been able to laugh at myself, Jack. Humour has kept me alive over all these years.'
And it's true, y'know. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect. ~ Ian Hislop

I hate the idea that I have to represent any particular section of society; I just write good telly, that's all. ~ Russell T. Davies

Put me on telly, and I think I have a relaxation on camera that makes an audience relax, too. It's not a conscious thing. Cameras don't bother me, whereas other people try to perform to them. ~ Kevin Whately

I was very small, about 3 or 4 I think, and just wanted to be the people on telly telling these wonderful stories. Obviously the idea grew and matured with me but I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I've just sort of taken it for granted all my life that that was what I would do. ~ David Tennant

I never thought I'd be one of those old hams who favours theatre over everything, but I'm getting that way. Telly and film seemed more fun when I was younger; turning left on planes and washing up in nice places. But there are things that you only learn in theatre. ~ Paul McGann

I'm not slim. I'm a curvy girl: I've got thighs and a bum. I don't mind baring the fact that I've got a bit of cellulite because everybody has. I find it off-putting when everybody on telly is the same size or looks the same build. For me, it's important for people to watch someone normal. ~ Vicky McClure

I never did that badly with women when I wasn't on telly, but it's a bit out of control now. Women try it on with me more than I'm comfortable with. It's strange, because I think I look like a troll wearing a woman's wig backwards. ~ Noel Fielding

I had a Saturday job in a chemist. The pay was something ridiculous like £2 an hour - it was slave labour - and I spent all day cleaning shelves. On my first day an actress from Eldorado, which was on telly at the time, came in and said, 'Can I have some Replense please?' I didn't know what it was, so I had to ask her and she had to say, 'It's vaginal moisturiser,' in front of a massive queue of people. After one day I was like, 'I don't want to do this job any more, it's just boring.' ~ Konnie Huq

Several of my family members drain me. I wish it wasn't so, but it is."
"Anything I can do?"
"No. Thank you, though."
"Would fast food make it better?"
"Goodness, no." But she shot him a tiny smile.
"You sure? There goes Whataburger."
The smile grew.
"I could take you horseback riding."
"Possibly one of the only things more stressful than dealing with my family."
"I could telly you a corny joke."
"Hmm."
"I could prank call your family. ~ Becky Wade

People always go on about how fantastic relationships are in the beginning, and of course everyone hates relationships when they end, but what about the middles? the middles where you know everything there is to know. Where you can look at the person you love and know what they're thinking, see something on the telly and know how they'd react;When you know exactly what they'd wear to come round and see you. ~ Mike Gayle

Are you close to your family?'
I considered it. 'Close' was one way of putting it. 'We're close,' I said cautiously. 'But we're very mean to each other. This morning I told my mum that if she didn't stop acting old I was going to lobby for a law on euthanasia, so a bus would come round every Monday morning and take away all the old people who complained that they couldn't hear the telly or see the buttons on their mobile phone or that they had a pain in their hip, and put a bullet in their heads. But we're close. ~ Marian Keyes

When grown-ups hear a little dark door creaking in their hearts they turn the telly up. They slug a glass of wine. They tell the cat it was just a door creaking. The cat knows. It jumps down from the sofa and walks out of the room. When that little dark door in a heart starts to go click-clack click-clack click-clack click-clack so loudly and violently their chest shows an actual beat - well, then they say they've got bad cholesterol and they try to quit using butter, they begin to go for walks.
When the tiny dark door in her heart creaks open, she will walk right through it.
She will lie down and inside her own heart like a bird in the night. ~ Jenni Fagan

You get pigeonholed. Some people are film stars, and some are theatre stars who do one-off telly. Somehow, I get into long-running series. ~ Kevin Whately

When I got a telly we had no aerial, but I discovered that if I or one of the children stood by it you could get a picture. So I had to make a statue that could stand by the telly. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

I'm a proud Greek. I carry my Hellenism like a badge of merit. ~ Telly Savalas

I get recognised a fair bit. It goes up when 'Peep Show' or the sketch show is on the telly or when we're doing loads of interviews. ~ Robert Webb

And the druids, they were into sex and death in an interesting night-time telly sort of way. ~ Eddie Izzard

If I cry on telly, I'm genuinely crying. If it's a gritty scene it can come naturally. ~ Kelvin Fletcher

I choose YouTube over telly. ~ Cory Doctorow

One of my Instructors at the Covenant has a tattoo of it on his arm."
His lips pursed. "Minister Telly has one on his arm, too."
"How in the world do you know that?" We cut across the frost- covered lawn to one of the covered walkways connecting smaller buildings to the main one. "Have you been sneaking into his room and cuddling with him, too?"
"Don't be jealous. You're my only cuddle bunny. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Charity knew that she had to be up early in the morning. And she knew that a weepy, silly, ridiculously old-fashioned love story was not the thing to watch with a broken heart. Nevertheless, she watched. And wept. And was still smiling when she fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning, with the remote in her hand and the telly still going. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

It definitely puts a strain on family life - I miss them like mad. Being a working mother I've been juggling house and career from day one. I want to hold out for telly for the second half of the year. ~ Louise Jameson

I slipped through every school I went to without leaving a trace. I was in no team; I was never a prefect. I was totally mediocre - well, I probably still am - but at places like Summer Fields and Eton, it's all about sport and doing your bit, and I always preferred to watch telly or read a book than run round a field. ~ Tom Parker Bowles

I wouldn't want to leave it so long before doing a play again, I get very stolid and sluggish if I do too much telly. ~ Matthew Macfadyen

I like making films about old people because they are repositories of amazing stories that they tell well. And they're incredibly good telly. ~ Ian Hislop

This is from "Marabou Stork Nightmares".
Bernard's Poem:

Did you see her on the telly the other day
good family entertainment the tabloids say

But when you're backstage
at your new faeces audition
you hear the same old shite of your own selfish volition

She was never a singer
a comic or a dancer
I cant say I was sad
when I found out she had cancer

Great Britain's earthy northern
comedy queen
takes the rand, understand
from the racist Boer regime

So now her cells are fucked
and thats just tough titty
I remember her act
that I caught back in Sun City

She went on and on about
'them from the trees
with different skull shapes
from the likes of you and me'

Her Neo-Nazi spell
it left me fucking numb
the Boers lapped it up with zeal
so did the British ex-pat scum

But what goes round
comes round they say
so welcome to another dose
of chemotherapy

And for my part
it's time to be upfront
so fuck off and die
you carcinogenic cunt. ~ Irvine Welsh

Well, it is a hunt for him, isn't it? Hunting, capturing. Power. I watch the telly. I know how these serial killers work.' He tapped his chest. 'Just call me Patrick Jane.'

Jacquie looked at him fondly. His eyes were either side of his nose and that was where his similarity to Simon Baker ended. 'No, darling,' she said gently. 'You're mental, please try and remember. He's the Mentalist. ~ M.J. Trow

That was sort of our family portrait. It's not the kind of thing you think you would miss. Maybe you don't even notice it at all those thousands of times, sitting between your mum and dad on the big green couch with your brother on the carpet getting in the way of the telly. Maybe you don't even notice that.
But you notice it when he isn't there anymore. You notice so many places where he isn't, and you hear so many of the things he doesn't say.
I do.
I hear them all the time. ~ Nathan Filer

There are times when I think, if I were a bit more famous, life could be easier in terms of work because producers want bums on seats, and they're going to get bums on seats if they get a name, if you have had that series on telly. ~ Alexander Hanson

So you don't fancy meeting up again?' Max persisted, though Neve didn't know why, because she thought she'd made her position perfectly clear. 'Swap war stories?'
'I don't have any war stories,' Neve said, and in that moment she felt that she never would. That every night would be spent creeping round her flat in her socks with the telly turned down so low that she could barely hear it, so in the end she'd have no other option but to escape into the pages of books where there were other girls falling in and out of love but not her. Never her. She stared down at the scuffed toes of her faux Ugg boots in sudden and tired defeat.
'If you don't have any war stories, then at least you don't have any war wounds,' Max said, so quietly that Neve had to strain her ears to catch his words. 'Take my number. ~ Sarra Manning

I only like doing live telly. It's great because you go in and do it and then go home. No edit, no retakes. ~ Paul O'Grady

An American has invented a remote control that will turn off any telly within a 20ft radius. What a marvellous device! What a splendid invention! What a really helpful and improving way of devoting your time to building something that turns off culture. Next week, I'm instigating Burn a Book Week, to encourage even more conversation. I've come up with a fantastic little device which I'll call a box of matches. ~ A.A. Gill

I watch Pretty Little Liars with my best friend Telly. We go to each other's houses when it airs and we watch it. ~ Naya Rivera

For me, a bit of anthropology in the evening is always better than staying and watching the telly. ~ Nick Rhodes

Where I get bored is when I show up for a shoot and they want me to wear a feather boa. Too obvious a thing for a poof on the telly to do. ~ Graham Norton

I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru. ~ David Tennant

All my interesting stories are from before I was on television. Nothing interesting has happened to me since then. Maybe it's because the most interesting thing in my life is the show and that's on telly. ~ Graham Norton

Being baldplate is an unfailing sex magnet. ~ Telly Savalas

Theatre has always been better disposed to colourblind casting than telly or film. Given that most television is contemporary, and it reaches 56 million people, I am disappointed there still isn't more representation. ~ Sanjeev Bhaskar

I stared at them. 'Every time what?' I said, as Nathan put the money into Will's hand.
'He said you'd be reading a book. I said you'd be watching telly. He always wins.'
My sandwich stilled at my lips. 'Always?
You've been betting on how boring my life is? ~ Jojo Moyes

I don't normally watch myself on the telly. ~ Frank Bruno

We were watching telly the night Nan burnt the house down. ~ Celine Kiernan

I thought they were staring at me because I was gay. But it was because I was on the telly. ~ Julian Clary

I am not bald - my head is just a solar panel for a sex machine. ~ Telly Savalas

I guess they have to label someone the sexiest person in the world, and it is always someone who is on telly even if it's the weatherman. For a couple of years it was me and then it was someone else. It's nicer being the sexiest man than the most ugly man. I live with it, and I don't mind it, but I don't go around with a big smile on my face everyday. ~ Mads Mikkelsen

I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it. ~ Gordon Ramsay

You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I've seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You're ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you're not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don't know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You're poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I'm small. It's what's in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don't excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don't match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You're dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I'm from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don't adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you're better than me. You don't like ~ Ania Walwicz

I always think I should try to get to bed early, but then I can't stop myself from watching telly and fiddling around on the net. ~ Jenson Button

I don't need Simon Bloody Cowell making me look like a right tit on the telly. ~ J.L. Merrow

I'm really visually stimulated more than anything. I don't really listen to music. I'm more into watching telly or watching movies and visual art. ~ Sia Furler

I don't watch a huge amount of telly. I read a lot. I'm reading at the moment 'Freedom,' by Jonathan Franzen, a great big brick of a book, and I'm loving it. ~ Nick Clegg

This is the bit where we turn on the telly and a nuclear war has started," I say, twisting to lie down next to him.

He smiles. "I don't think so. Doesn't work that way. Sometimes the happy thing just happens. ~ Beth O'Leary

I'd hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hour's extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead they'd given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? There's an international symbol for the gents' toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television. ~ Nick Hornby

It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever. ~ Philip Adams

I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it. ~ Jo Brand

It is funny how people - millions and millions of people - go about watching the telly and singing and humming in spite of the fact that they lost brother or father or lover in a war; and what is stranger still, they contemplate with equanimity seeing their other brothers or lovers off to yet another war. They don't see the tragedy of it all. Now and then one of the millions reads a book, or starts thinking, or something shakes him, and then he sees tragedy all over the place. Wherever he looks, he finds tragedy. He finds it tragic that other people don't see this tragedy around them and then he becomes like Font or Edna, or joins some party or other, or marches behind banners until his own life, seen detachedly, becomes a little tragic. ~ Waguih Ghali

My parents' generation was definitely pre-telly, and they knew how to entertain each other. Everybody knew something that they could do - a song or a poem, or a piece of music. At school, I remember being a cat and then a budgie and then a bumble bee. I obviously thought all that was marvelous. ~ Lindsay Duncan

I think you have to take your worth from yourself. If you don't look like people do on the telly, it doesn't matter. If you have nothing in common with the women and men in magazines, it doesn't matter. They're not the norm. Magazines women are put there to make us buy stuff. All it makes me want to buy is food. And fewer magazines. Fuck that, none. If you know that you are a good person, kind, hardworking, interesting and interested then go with that. Fuck what your hair looks like. Or your nails. The heels of of my feet are covered in such hard skin that they make a noise on wooden floors. Do I dash out and get hard skin-melting shite from Boots? No, I just think, if shoes become scarce I'll be fine. My husband once said that skin is nature's shoes. ~ Sarah Millican

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history.

I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad,
which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list.

But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius nov ~ Grant Morrison

The telly is invaded
by hallelujah channels
and informercials,
both trying to sell
everything needed
to save you. ~ Emma Cameron

Telly and films has been my thing, not necessarily by choice, and if the right piece of theatre came along, I would jump at it. ~ Darren Boyd

I don't care where you went to school. There - have I made your day? No? All right, I'll go further: I also don't care what your dad did for a living or how your mum voted. Nor do I mind whether you ate your tea in front of the telly, dinner at the kitchen table, or supper in the dining room. ~ Robert Webb

I'll always be attached to telly in one way or another, whether it's a character or producer or director, I just love the medium. ~ Idris Elba

I haven't really got much get up and go. I can't believe I'm on the telly. I'm so lazy. ~ Allan Carr

What's always got me is the fact that when people talked on the telly about Iraq, before Afghanistan kicked off, you'd get only these public-school-type army officers talking about what was going on out there. I kept thinking, 'Why don't we get the true voice of the squaddie? Why don't we hear from the lads on the battlefield?' ~ Ross Kemp

I saw this train driver and said, 'I wanna go to Paris.' He said, 'Eurostar?' I said, 'Well I've been on telly but I'm no Dean Martin.' Mind you, at least the Eurostar's comfy. It's murder on the Orient Express isn't it? ~ Tim Vine

It's about good copy and ensuring that cases can be made into top-notch documentaries on the telly. Public approval is the all-important currency these days, and police budgets ebb and flow on the back of circulation and viewing figures. ~ Jasper Fforde

Pagans they were into sex, death, and religion in an interesting night-time telly type of way. ~ Eddie Izzard

I don't like 'cool telly.' ~ Martin Freeman

I'm a romantic realist. I knew I would become a star, just as I know some day the bubble will burst. ~ Telly Savalas

William Tell's son, Telly, who said as his father was pointing the bow and arrow at the apple on his head, There's gotta be an easier way to kill worms. Never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons

In some households you only have to turn up three times before you're expected to make your own tea, draw up a chair in front of the telly and call the cat a bastard. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Charity didn't mean to waste the entire afternoon. But her favorite daytime drama was on the telly. It was always the same, she thought, stretching out on the bed to watch. The sex got her interested first, and then the story. Before long she was totally hooked, and deep into the intricate plots and the glamorous goings-on. And afterwards, she just felt drained.
She was sound asleep by the time Lady Margaret came home. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

The best job was when I was at drama school and I cleaned flats in the Barbican. I loved it. They were spotless anyway, so you'd just watch the telly and flick a duster around. ~ Sarah Parish

It takes time and energy, and if I'm working, then I'd rather flop in front of the telly than put on a tiny dress and work out how to get myself to God knows where. I mean, lazy some would call it. ~ Daisy Donovan

Linda Hertney: It's like a final goodbye from Todd. (Linda = nut. Once claimed crow on ledge was reincarnation of her dead husband. Said she could telly by way crow's head was cocked disapprovingly at large lunch she was eating.) ~ George Saunders

I think it's because, in our complicated lives, we yearn only for the simple. An evening in front of the telly. A nice sit-down. A game of cards. At a drinks party, I can find myself talking to a fascinating and beautiful woman who's just written a book about something interesting and clever. But what I yearn for is to be in the pub with my mates. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

I like to get up and get out. Otherwise you end up kicking about, and it's easy to flick the telly on; then before you know it, it is 11 A.M. and you haven't done anything. ~ Anton Du Beke

Before you go,mate,turn on the telly. Something raunchy too. Think I'll rub off one before I go to sleep ~ Jeaniene Frost

Because ... most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.'
'Too stupid.'
'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?'
'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.'
'Exactly.'
'That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus.' It was worse than he thought.
'No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food. ~ Nick Hornby

Well, I've got a color telly, and a fridge. I've got some pork chops in the fridge, but the chops keep going off, so I have to keep buying more. ~ Syd Barrett

I was born with a romantic nature, and I'll carry it to my grave. ~ Telly Savalas

I hate that thing that if you are over 45, and you're going to be on telly or make films, you have to do all this stupid stuff to your face. I would no more let someone stick a needle in my forehead than fly to the moon. ~ Lesley Manville

8. You hate the political buisness of nationality. You hate everything, in politics and art and everything else, that is not genuine and deep and necessary. You don't have time for silly trivial things. You live seriously. You don't go to silly films, even if you want to; you don't read cheap newspapers; you don't listen to trash on the wireless and the telly; you don't waste time talking about nothing. You use your life. ~ John Fowles

But I quite like that the public has a very short attention span. If I haven't been on telly for a little bit, I can sense it. People don't take as much notice of you, it's really quite palpable. ~ Sophie Ellis-Bextor

It's very difficult once you've been on telly because people know what you do. They give you a little bit of grace but then they're harsher if you're not funny, so you have to be funny. ~ Noel Fielding

How do those people who don't read books plug the gaps in their day? The journeys, the break-times, the evenings when the telly is crap, the time in bed before sleep arrives? ~ Robert Craig

Why is it Americans are socially permitted to say 'fricking' when in fact everyone knows the word they're actually saying is 'fucking'?
... here you have some bland ho-bag telly presenter saying 'I'm so fricking mad' about whatever, while you, the home viewer, know she's three millimeters away from saying 'I'm so fucking mad'. But instead of being outraged because she basically said 'fucking' on TV, everyone giggles, like she's being cute.
... it's like ten times worse because the public is thinking 'fucking, fucking, fucking'. They're so full of shame or so socially conditioned that the mental effect of saying the word 'fucking' is technically amplified. By actually saying the word 'fucking' in real life, instead of 'fricking', you're doing American society a favor. ~ Douglas Coupland

The more telly you do, the more it feels like a factory. ~ Kevin Whately

She'd liked things better when everything had been controlled simply by on and off switches and when push-button telephone and telly remotes were as far as technology had gone. Make a few calls and put the burden of information searching on someone else. That was the ticket. Now, however, things were different. It was the investigator's mental shoe leather that got worn down, not the real thing. ~ Elizabeth George