Quotes from Arthur Smith

Acting is the most demanding, painful job in the world.

After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.

Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

Acting in a stage play is like working the evening shift in an office.

I myself am pathetically impressed when I meet writers of very long novels. How can they spend so many hundreds of hours at the miserable, lonely pastime of creating fiction?

It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance.

Don Quixote's 'Delusions' is an excellent read - far better than my own forthcoming travel book, 'Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.'

Travel books are, by and large, boring. They lodge uncomfortably between fact, fiction and autobiography.

Global warming, the ongoing destruction of the planet, Third World debt, the uselessness of the railways, the takeover by the corporations, the scary George Bush person: all these things are important and should be animating me into outrage. Yet somehow they do not.

Obviously I am not bothered about men's fashion - is anyone, apart from Jonathan Ross?

It was Julie Burchill who decreed that, beyond a certain age, a man should not be seen in a leather jacket.

I've noticed that my resolutions involve me not doing stuff that I wasn't going to do anyway so here's something more positive. I'm going to retrain as a Latin teacher in a provincial public school.

When synchronised swimming first appeared on TV, we laughed very heartily, and I, for one, applauded the decision to introduce humour into the Olympics.

A female friend who caught me watching Fashion TV reckons its audience is largely made up of slobbering men who are just taking a break from the appalling Men & Motors channel. I don't agree.

The history of the relationship between comedy and swimming is short indeed. Of course it is always funny when someone falls into water, but that's about it.

The book may be garbage, but if it weighs in at a kilo or more, I stand before its author in awe.

The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up.

Theatricals can be irritating, but will provide a better night out than mobile phone salespeople.

The Bible has no doubt had much influence in its time, but it provides very few laughs. None, in fact.

If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s.

Listening to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 is the most miserable thing any human being can do, but attending awards ceremonies isn't far behind.

I'm an armchair kind of guy, especially when it's raining, which it always is and always will be.

Don Quixote's 'Delusions' is an excellent read - far better than my own forthcoming travel book, 'Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.'