Quotes from Victoria Coren Mitchell

Reverse-parking in a small space is one of those high-pressure situations where a critical, watching eye becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I was at school, I was forced to play lacrosse, a game in which tiny, rock-hard missiles fly at your head, and you must catch them with a stick to avoid a brain haemorrhage. I was regularly punished for not taking part more wholeheartedly.

Socks and sandals together are absolutely fine, as long as your flares are wide enough to cover your feet.

I'm not a luddite. Science, computers, medicine, they're all great. But nature is context. That which we can't control. Its constant mortality and immortality is an answer to the terror of finite existence. It reassures the soul.

I've never understood why the knowledge training and rigorous testing of London cabbies isn't rolled out all over the U.K.

Pudding is not a human right.

Politics is a pure meritocracy. That's why Gordon Brown's cabinet had two brothers and a married couple in it. They just happened to be the best people around.

My own, purely personal view is that reading, study, poetry, and scientific experiment might be more rewarding than a job or children, so I would never advise anyone against university if they're going for the right reasons.

School is supposed to civilise us, to tame our wilder instincts and teach us how to be more sensible, more knowledgeable, and cleverer.

I can't believe that 100% of the people who stand in art galleries looking at art are thinking, 'Well, here I am, looking at art.' They must be having some sort of other, unselfconscious experience.

It's not that I can't find art beautiful. I just don't know what to do, standing there in the gallery. I don't know what to think about. Once I've seen it, I've seen it; that takes about two seconds. I am interested and then immediately bored, immediately.

Given the choice, the majority of children wouldn't go to school at all. The whole thing's ghastly.

I am a big fan of Bournemouth, having enjoyed many happy hours on its sandy beach and crazy golf course.

If you find it difficult to draw a neat line with an eyeliner pencil, start with a big, thick, wonky line and then reduce it with eye makeup remover. This is serious advice. I do this every single time I put makeup on.

When I was learning to drive, I thought the big milestones were changing gear, changing lane, and three-point-turns.

A long time ago, my grandfather used to play blackjack with me, when I was very small, and I quite enjoyed that.

I have quite a good card sense. My grandmother taught me to play bridge, so I had a reasonable sense of the cards and how they work.

You can always recognise my restless peers and me; we are the people whose feet you hear tramping along the pavement at the other end of the phone line because we can only make calls while moving.

Nature made your eyebrows like that for a reason. I don't know the reason. Some people say it's to do with keeping rain out of monkeys' eyes. Whatever. The point is, if you try to redesign your eyebrows with tweezers and pens, it will look terrible.

People have become desperate to reduce everything, including each other, to mindless categories of good and bad, as if the world can be divided into Facebook likes and dislikes.

We all look stupid in patterned tights.

The key to nature's therapy is feeling like a tiny part of it, not a master over it. There's amazing pride in seeing a bee land on a flower you planted - but that's not your act of creation, it's your act of joining in.

I'm no longer bossy in the honest sense; I've mastered (mistressed) the art of passive-aggression.

Insomniacs will be familiar with that disastrous moment as you lie there in the dark, with your eyes shut, when you think, 'What does my brain actually have to do to make me become asleep? What is the difference between that state and this? Why is the weird, invisible change not happening tonight?'