I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give.

Hugh Laurie

Categorized in : Thinking Kindness Goal

It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

Hugh Laurie

procrastination time thinking

I think that’s the lesson you learn in life. As you get older you realize you’re never going to grow up and you’re never going to be ready. And you may, as well, do things now, don’t wait

Hugh Laurie

growing-up waiting thinking

I am a coffee fanatic. Once you go to proper coffee, you can't go back. You cannot go back.

Hugh Laurie

fanatics coffee

Every day is the opportunity for a better tomorrow.

Hugh Laurie

better-tomorrow tomorrow opportunity

To be able to pretend to be something that I'm frankly not is very liberating and exciting.

Hugh Laurie

liberating able exciting

Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless

Hugh Laurie

arbitrary feelings love-is

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

Hugh Laurie

piano blow fall

There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now.

Hugh Laurie

ready

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.

Hugh Laurie

variables house lying

Winning a rowing race is not like winning anything else. Here's my theory: you're facing backwards, so you're looking at the people you're beating--and there's something exquisite about that.

Hugh Laurie

race winning people

Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.

Hugh Laurie

pages girl missing

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

cycling rain moving

I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.

Hugh Laurie

done should-have thinking

I wouldn't be able to act like Al Pacino or play the piano like Dr. John, But I could probably act better than Dr. John and play the piano better than Al Pacino.

Hugh Laurie

piano drs play

Russian vodka is OK if you need to clean the oven. For drinking, it must henceforth be Polish.

Hugh Laurie

vodka drinking needs

People will survive, and they will find happiness. Happiness only comes when you're not looking for it.

Hugh Laurie

finding-happiness people

I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away.

Hugh Laurie

destiny believe ideas

To tell you the truth, the older I get, the less I know. I keep meeting people, both older and younger, who seem to have accrued so much more knowledge or expertise or certainty about who they are and the jobs they do. I just marvel at it.

Hugh Laurie

jobs people knowledge

Pain is an event. It happens to you, and you deal with it in whatever way you can.

Hugh Laurie

events pain way

Now, my mom always said two wrongs don't make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.

Hugh Laurie

confused mom two