Best 27 quotes of Richard Ayoade on MyQuotes

A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

As in, I think 'Badlands' is one of the funniest films of all time: "Every day I wish I was carried off to a magical land, but that never happened" is one of the funniest lines in any film.

A writer/director is a tough thing to gauge when someone hasn't directed a movie before. You just don't know. Sometimes it will be a great script that's written beautifully, and then the director who has also written it does not have the facility to translate it.

Cars are good for entrances and exits. And there is something about driving that is quite cliched in a funny way. I like Roy Orbison's video for I Drove All Night because it's so literal. It is just a man driving throughout the night. I like that silliness. To be in a video is a ridiculous thing. It's almost impossible to do it without any humour.

I only ever privately tell people stuff for the scene. And I often ask what they feel is right. Normally, by the time that we're filming, if it doesn't work, it always the script.

I think people have the capacity to be many different things and many seemingly contradictory behaviors.

I think there's nothing worse than telling actors what to do in front of everyone, because then on the next take, everyone's waiting to see if you do that ... Everyone watches. It's just the worst thing.

I try to write every day. Sometimes the things come out well, and sometimes they don't. When they come out well you think, Wow, I must be really great; and when they come out poorly, you think you must be terrible, but the truth is that's how any process works.

I've always felt that actors in my experience have a very good and accurate instinct about whether something feels right or not. They just have a sense because they have to literally do it.

The act of seeing any film generally is you knowing more than the characters, even if its the classic Hitchcock shot of two people talking and a bomb being under the table. Part of the pleasure of it is seeing where people go wrong, and the irony of situations.

The most interesting part of filming is what the actors do. That's the primary link between the story and the audience.

To be in a video is a ridiculous thing. It's almost impossible to do it without any humour

When I do plays in New York and do eight shows a week, you have the same feeling. Three of them are terrible, four of them are okay and one is really good. It's hard to say what accounts for the really good one or for the terrible ones, but you end up trying to remanufacture whatever worked for the good one, like eating a tomato. I ate a tomato and the show was good, but that of course is not how it works.

Why have a pet hate? Why should it be confined? My hate is both wide ranging and total.

With a live performance, you feel nervous because there's a sense it could do well or badly based on how well you are performing, whereas the only variable with a film premiere is technical, which invariably you have very little control over, whether the sound is good, whether the acoustics of the room are good.

For a tree without a past is like a man without roots; and unless we stand in rich soil, our leaves will blow like blossom into the night.

Heroes hate wasting time. 'You're wasting my time,' they'll say. Yet they devote very little time to time management, and rarely consult a diary.

I don't know that I brood. I just occasionally take time out to silently consider the specific ways in which others have wronged me.

If a fleet of jet-black CHOPPERS ain't cresting over a back-lit hill by the end of Act II, you've got to start asking yourself whether this is a movie or a fucking art installation.

I have all these things that I want to say to her, like... Like how I can tell she's a lonely person, even if other people can't. Cause I know what it feels like to be lost and lonely and invisible.

Is there any moment in time when you‘re doing something better than watching Predator/i>?

Is there any moment in time when you‘re doing something better than watching Predator?

I've found out that I may be more awkward than I thought I was, but then I never saw anyone because I was in my room a lot. It's fine not to speak when you're on your own and to stammer and to not have eye contact but, outside, it's frowned upon.

Remember the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Bunch of monkeys collecting bones. What‘s that got to do with space? They don‘t even have lasers! Cut that shit. And what about Citizen Kane? If they‘d wanted to gross some dollar, they should‘ve called it Dude, Where‘s My Sled?

There's a line in David Lean's punishingly long 1962 desert flick, Lawrence of Arabia: 'Truly for some men nothing is written unless they write it.' Duh.

You know, it's funny: there are never any middle-aged souls. You hear about people being young souls, you really hear about old souls, but what about middle-aged souls?