Steve Coogan Quotes

If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.

The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious.

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 like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.

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

People come up to me in supermarkets and demand humour. And the less amusing I am, the more they piss themselves. So I say, "I'm doing my shopping, mate, OK?" and the guy will be on the floor in hysterics. Quite odd. Eventually I do have to say something funny so I usually go for something pathetic like, "It's a nice place to shop but I wouldn't like to live here!" and they roar again. Wet themselves. I'm lucky though that I am not massively famous, I can get the Tube without much bother. Must be awful being the Beckhams.

The important thing is not to be defined by what others think of you.

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.

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.

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.

I try to not make safe choices, but I also like to do stuff which is interesting and is sort of exciting in some way and accessible.

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.

Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.

I think I'm good with actors. I like directing actors. I also like to show up and just do an acting gig. Where I'm just a hired gun, I don't have to have an opinion on anything.I never got involved in all this stuff because I wanted to control stuff; I got involved in writing and producing because I wasn't getting interesting acting gigs. In a way I'm grateful that I didn't get interesting roles, because it made me pull my finger out and do some work.

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.

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

When it comes to morality, I'd rather have an unfaithful president like Bill Clinton, who tried to reform welfare, than a faithful George Bush who propagated an illegal war on the rest of the world. So that is where my morality stands.

If it was just the potatoes that were affected, at the end of the day you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater.

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

But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

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.

Comedy can be silly and gross and offensive, as long as there's sort of a point. You can make a joke that, on the face of it, is racist. Ostensibly someone can appear to be racist, but if you know you're making a point about race, and not just being pig-headed, then you can do that. I think some people who don't understand comedy will have a knee-jerk reaction to some stuff, and will always be offended by it because they don't understand it. Some people react to it in a vociferous way, which is unsophisticated, but there's always going to be those people out there.

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.

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