I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don’t know why they’d decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of Frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture. It could rain in a room this big.

— Hugh Laurie

I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.

— Hugh Laurie

...killing Dirk, killing anybody, was not going to change anything apart from Francisco's f***ING ego, which was already large enough to house the world's poor twice over, with a few million bourgeoisie in the spare-room.

— Hugh Laurie

Normally, words are sent from the brain towards the mouth, and somewhere along the line you take a moment to check them, see that they are actually the ones you ordered and that they’re nicely wrapped, before you bundle them on their way towards your palate and out into the fresh air. But when you’re caught up in the flow of things, the checking part of your mind can fall down on the job.

— Hugh Laurie

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it’s never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us day fall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know if we’ve ever read a book, that day doesn’t fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls. In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing forever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over.

— Hugh Laurie

Riding my motorcycle around L.A. is like my own video game. But unlike many folks at the wheel, I am occupied with getting where I'm going and keeping myself safe. Most people are applying makeup, texting, and checking out the beauty in the next car.

— Hugh Laurie

Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag, and you go to the next town.

— Hugh Laurie

The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that’s the horrible truth of it. (...) This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days - because sameness is our religion and heretics are no more welcome now than they ever were - but I’m going to acknowledge it, because I’ve always felt that humility before the facts is the only thing that keeps a rational man together. Be humble in the face of facts, and proud in the face of opinions, as George Bernard Shaw once said. He didn’t, actually. I just wanted to put some authority behind this observation of mine, because I know you’re not going to like it.

— Hugh Laurie

This was all horribly wrong. This was red wine with fish. This was a man wearing a dinner jacket and brown shoes. This was as wrong as things get.

— Hugh Laurie

This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed.

— Hugh Laurie