David Mitchell Quotes

The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.

You would think that people who are so powerful would not be so upset by little knocks in the press.

I haven't talked to the press much. That's why I've gotten kind of a bad reputation. They look at me and think I don't give a damn. But I'm not comfortable with the attention.

I'm very cautious of how I'm presented and my type of reputation.

It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us; our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.

Will people think I've been dropped? Oh God, you don't want people to think that. No one will want to touch you if they think you got dropped.

I think a lot of people haven't even seen my videos but just hearing my name are like "Oh, that's that dumb Internet thing." And I'm definitely trying to shake that a little bit.

In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.

You aristocratic ladies and your gold-plated twats. You always think it's such a honor for me to touch you." He surveyed her with mocking green eyes. "You think you're the first high-kick wench I've ever had? I used to have blue-blooded bitches like you pay me to do this. You've gotten it for free.

I know that people think I'm a party king; but, face it, if I finished the bottle every time I took a drink, I wouldn't be able to do the aerials I do onstage.

Somebody I love and have a huge amount of respect for once told me something that, to this day, I don't really think I understand. It was probably toward the end of Harry Potter, and they were talking to me about afterwards and that kind of stuff. And they were saying, "You need to think of yourself as a brand and you need to protect that brand." I just don't understand what that really means in terms of being an actor, and I also think I would find that a slightly soul-destroying way to look at myself.

Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that.

It's very difficult, historically, to define what an elite is. But whatever it is, people are very angry at that idea, I think, not so much because of wealth or privilege as much as attitude that the populous masses, if I could use that overused term, feel that a particular government or cultural group is not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.

I believe there can be dignity in the acting profession. And I think there ought to be more dignity in the publicity an actor gets.

Power will be maintained by the groovy guy or gal who gets the most media coverage for his sleaze. Naturally, his friends in various businesses will do okay, too.

People are fascinated by the rich: Shakespeare wrote plays about kings, not beggars.

I'm not in the business of making us look clean, but I don't want us to look like monsters either. I think there is a little bit of hero and villain in all of us.

I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.

Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.

Do people think I'm cool because I was in a movie when I was a child? No. Well, maybe a little bit more than they used to. There's definitely a nostalgia factor.

A lot of people now think Im a shoe. They dont even know I was a tennis player. The shoe has really taken on a life of its own, way beyond me.

It's funny how you have to keep changing, or showing that you are capable of doing something different from people's expectations. People really only do remember you from the last thing you've done, or desperately want to put you into a position that they think you're capable of.

To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.

That I was not dueling with the king, but trying to communicate with him, was itself an incommunicable fact.