Quotes from Arthur Smith

The Romantic poets were the prototype ramblers, and I've often found myself following in their footsteps - although perhaps not all of their footsteps since a typical walk for Samuel T. Coleridge might last two days and cover 145km.

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

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.

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

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

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

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.

I am 54 and age is slowly writing itself on my face.

Ninety-eight per cent of laughter is nothing to do with jokes, which do not deserve to bear the weight of all the funny stuff in the world.

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

I've been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I've come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.

A savage review is much more entertaining for the reader than an admiring one; the little misanthrope in each of us relishes the rubbishing of someone else.

My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.

The moon puts on an elegant show, different every time in shape, colour and nuance.

Every generation of children has its private hero.

Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.

It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.

If you want to be happy for a short time, get drunk happy for a long time, fall in love; happy forever, take up gardening.

I see my large nose, like half an avocado. I broke it falling downstairs when I was six, and it now resembles a large blob of play-dough.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

It is London fashion week, and once again I haven't been invited to any shows. This is upsetting given my well-known love of fashion, or, as I think of it, playing with the dressing-up box.

Sometimes it's good to do something that you've never done before, so yesterday, I went out to buy Elton John's new album.

Sky and clouds and trees and little figures relaxing in the perfect rural rhythm of their surroundings: these are the staples of a Gainsborough landscape.

Give me the new thing and give it to me now. I don't want that old thing - I've seen it, heard it, bought it, slept with it, loved it, but now I'm bored with the old thing and I'm gagging for the new stuff.