Top 55 Sandi Toksvig Quotes

Being attracted to my own sex was as much part of who I was as being short or blonde or drawn to the library, but I was made to grow up feeling ‘other.’ Most books, films – even advertisements – didn’t reflect how I felt, and I often watched the world from the outside.

You can go anywhere in the world, and people’s faces light up when they put delicious food in their mouths.

I think communication should be fun and that we should all worry less about how we say things and more about what we say.

Is raising boys different from raising girls? Oh my goodness, yes! It’s a different species, and I love them for that.

The truth is I have never been any good at sport, OK?

I was born gay, OK? I’ve always known. I don’t think my family were the least bit surprised.

Too often, there are complaints in the British papers about the BBC. It’s too left wing, too right wing, too pro-Brexit, too anti, and so on. It’s only when you go abroad and try to find out what is going on in the world that everyone falls with gratitude before the BBC News.

When my three children were little, I took them to Rome. On our way to our destination, we went to see the Colosseum and returned to the car to find everything had been stolen. Trying to buy everything for a week, including clothing for three small, very tired children, was a low point in my life.

It was actually having a son made me think about feminism.

Food is an international language, an expression of love.

I’ve had a surprising number of near-death experiences: I was nearly blown up by a landmine in Sudan; I was stranded on the Zambezi river at night; I was bucked off a rodeo horse in Arizona and had to be airlifted to hospital; and, worst of all, I once ate a Pot Noodle.

You want a kitchen put in, I’m your girl. I’m very handy, and I love a practical challenge. I fit all the stereotypes of the lesbian with power tools.

Because of my fighting for LGBT rights, I have seen the possibility of change. And that gives me heart to believe that it is possible to effect change.

My life won’t have full quality until we achieve equality for all.

Don’t climb into a fridge. That’s my advice.

I have to say, I have to tell you that my kids had a most marvelous time having two moms. When my daughter was at university, she got flu. And both mums rushed to be with her. And we were both looking after her and making soup and tidying up. And one of her friends came in and went, ‘Two mums? Not fair.’

I always wanted to get married. I was very drawn to the idea of a partner with whom you went through life, a mate who was always in your corner.

I hope I don’t have an ego.

I don’t think secrets are a good thing. I think they are a cancer of the soul. So I decided to come out.

Social media, to me, has got out of hand. Why can’t we all be nice to each other?

I am keen on a spiritual life and have struggled to find a place for my heart in a religious community.

I don’t care if you’re from the right or left of politics – there are core objectives we can all agree on: equal pay, equal representation on the media, equal representation at board level, politics, an end to domestic violence.

The problem with money issued by any government is that its only value is what those in charge decree.

I worry that every time I lay down my credit card of choice, it says something about me. About my social standing or how I see myself. The very colour of your card is an indication of where you stand in the wealth stakes.

English is full of Scandinavian words. Margate, Ramsgate, Billingsgate, any town with a ‘gate’ on it takes their suffix from the Danish word ‘gade’ which simply means ‘street.’

I’m quite a shy person, and I dislike narcissism intensely.

The truth is I don’t really like the world of plastic money: the great chip-and-pin double act of modern payment. I prefer cash. I don’t like the idea of some distant clerk nodding each time I make a card purchase and quietly adding to my ‘consumer profile.’ I’m anti all cards.

No matter how far I travel from Denmark, I still miss the food, so ScandiKitchen in Great Titchfield Street in central London is an essential part of my life.

I know we don’t all follow in the family footsteps, but you are, I suppose, more likely to consider becoming a butcher if you have spent your childhood watching a parent debone a pig.

Noel Fielding is one of the nicest guys in show business. The first time I met him, I felt like I had met a rather wayward cousin whose take on the world made me laugh.

I decided that instead of making jokes about politics, I need to take part in it, and therefore, I can’t make jokes and participate.

For three months, when I was 23 years old, I worked as a clerk at Wandsworth Sewer.

I was never interested in how I look.

I’m ashamed to say, I’ve done hideous pen portraits of people I don’t like in my novels. And they’ll say, ‘Oh, that person was hideous,’ and I’m nodding, and I’m thinking, ‘It’s you, you fool!’

When people say, ‘There aren’t enough women on panel shows,’ the answer is to make the host a woman.

I haven’t the energy to despise anyone.

The fact is, there is not now, nor has there ever been in the whole of history, a single country in the world where women have equality with men.

Like most women, my weight goes up and down.

‘The News Quiz’ is one of the things I am proudest of in my professional life.

I’ve met Theresa May, and I think she’s a good person. I’m not someone who goes, ‘Ooooh, boooo, the Tories,’ or ‘Ooooh, boo’ anyone, actually. You sit down and have a sensible conversation, and she is really, really capable of having a sensible conversation.

Sitting on a plastic chair at night listening to the sea lapping below while sipping a cold beer is about as good as life gets.

I’ve downloaded the BBC’s ‘Cranford’ with Judi Dench because I like a bit of bonnet acting, and I can turn it on and off without worrying about whether I can follow what’s happening.

I’ve played the Royal Albert Hall to 8,500 people, and there wasn’t a nerve in my body.

Language is ever on the move, and most days, I check out the ‘Urban Dictionary’ where anyone can invent a new and useful word or phrase.

My wife and I drove across America following the Oregon Trail, which the pioneers once passed along.

Do you know there were two pilots made for ‘Have I Got News For You’ before the series started two decades ago: one hosted by Angus Deayton and one hosted by me. But I was told that they couldn’t have a woman in charge of the news.

Endless books claim that the brains of men and women are wired differently. They have titles such as ‘Why Men Don’t Iron’ and set out to convince us that women are somehow biologically suited to getting the creases out of clothes while men peruse maps.

I had tried every diet out there – I would lose weight for a bit, then put it back on again.

You can’t complain or have a say if you don’t vote.

I’m slightly obsessed with women’s history, so I’d love to talk to Emily Dickinson or Louisa May Alcott.

I’d love to retire in terms of not having to go to work anymore and earn a living.

Although I’m sure she’s completely charming and delightful, I’m not sure if Kate Middleton might be the best role model. This is a person who has got where she is by marriage, a person whose weight, clothing, hair we worry about – we don’t worry about what she’s thinking.

I was once very unpleasantly groped while I was broadcasting by a famous individual who shall remain nameless. When I told the staff afterwards what had happened, everybody thought it was amusing. There was a shrugged shoulder approach to the whole thing.

I went to a physiotherapist, and she said something to me no one has ever said: ‘Sandi, you have plantar fasciitis, because you’re fat.’ I left and sat in my car shaking. She’d told me the truth, which no one else had. It was painful, but I needed to hear it.

‘QI’ is exactly what the best TV ought to be – you learn something, but you are also crying with laughter.