Top 75 Tim Minchin Quotes

Christopher Hitchens’s autobiography, ‘Hitch 22’, is a poignant read and very interesting because I have a very poor knowledge of recent political history – or, for that matter, distant political history.

I’m not a good philanthropist yet; I’m not as good as I’d like to be… I believe very hard in luck. It’s all chance; therefore, any privilege you have is chaos.

I can wax boringly about the role of comedy in mitigating pain. For so many comedians, comedy comes out of personal despair. I’m not a very despairing person myself, but I do fear despair and the death of loved ones.

I’m a comedian because I want people to like me. That’s really why all comedians are comedians.

Mum and Dad had high expectations of us as human beings – it wasn’t just about education. It’s a fantastic way to go about parenting, and I aspire to that.

Acting’s just always been one of those things I’ve enjoyed.

I just see myself as someone who has a bit of a way with words, basically.

I do feel infuriated by the things I perceive to be unfair.

I think it’s great that these little various skills I have seem to add up to something, because I’m not the greatest pianist or the greatest vocalist or the greatest actor.

I just want people to hold themselves to account about what they think more, because I strongly believe that the way to live a moral life is to not allow yourself to have beliefs which are easy but which don’t make sense.

My granddad had a 1,500-acre hobby farm that he had built up from scratch in Western Australia, so my siblings and I spent our childhoods going there a lot.

Generally, there’s a correlation between good work and good reviews. In the very odd, very rare case that they say it’s terrible, but actually you’re a genius who is ahead of your time, you are going to just have to suffer.

I never watch television, although, the other night, my wife and I caught an episode of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ from Season Six. It’s the only series of which I’ve ever watched every single episode.

If you don’t have anything different to say, don’t say it at all. That’s my rule.

In a global world, nationalism is a fantasy, and it’s poison. It used to be appropriate, but it’s not anymore, and we haven’t learned that lesson yet.

As someone who has never been in a gossip magazine, I do not deserve the contempt of the term ‘celebrity.’

I’m quite a gregarious, outgoing person.

I saw ‘The Wild Duck’ at the Belvoir St. Theatre in Sydney, and it was one of the best pieces of theatre I’d ever seen.

If we talk about ‘Groundhog Day’ as a humanistic text – we only have one life, and there’s no punishment or reward afterwards – then the wisdom is, just be kind because that will make you happy and the people around you happy.

I just always thought ‘Groundhog Day’ was potentially a great idea.

My whole mission is to have a long, interesting career, not a short spiky one.

Dad was known for his barbecues at weekends and bubble and squeak on Sundays. We’d all have to set the table and clear the table. We had our own seats, totally structured.

My shows are basically about ethics.

I don’t want my work or me, as a person, to be held up as a paradigm because, as Richard Dawkins knows, if people hold you up too much, you’re only ever going to disappoint them by being a human.

I was rejected by every agent in Australia when I was starting out. No one would represent me, because I didn’t fit into a particular box, and I wasn’t a trained musician or performer, but history has perhaps proven that perhaps I have something to give.

I spent thousands of thousands of hours playing the piano, and by thousands of hours, I mean playing in cover bands or wedding bands or disco bands or original bands or playing cabaret for Todd McKenney.

That’s the incredible thing about ‘Matilda’: it keeps manifesting itself in different ways.

Given that everyone’s got a voice, it’s the age of the democratisation of information through digital technology. That means women can rise up, and people of colour can rise up, and these stories are much more present to us. And that’s great.

I have written a lot of musical theatre over my life – two Olivier Award-winning musicals – and I still don’t think I’m ready to be the boss in the room.

The Internet now is completely full of memes, and it’s interesting, the idea that instead of having a sign crotched on your door or a magnet on your fridge saying whatever cliches and bon mots, pictures laid out with some text are passed around and move really fast.

Comedy is often a short career because you get to a point where you are no longer a small thing punching up at targets; you are the big thing, and it’s hard to write from that position.

London’s my favourite place. I lived in Crouch End for years and come back as much as I possibly can.

I want to write musicals for my whole life. I always did.

I don’t like courting controversy because I don’t like people not liking me.

You’ve got to teach yourself you can do your job no matter what happens.

It’s about the audience – if they laugh and clap, you feed off that, and if they don’t, you doubt everything you’ve ever done.

London represents the idea that someone pulled away the set from my life and replaced it with another. ‘Here is your new baby. Here is your new life. And now you do comedy.’ Without being smug, it’s the best fun.

I just do what I gotta do and try to show people I can write some funny lyrics and play piano, and hopefully that’ll make them dig further. I really believe in my form. That’s why I haven’t done a lot of telly, and I’m not a regular on any panel shows, and I’m not in a sitcom or all those things.

I want to be here for my family. I want to make stuff in Australia. I want to take what I’ve learned and contribute it to the industry. I think there’s a moral imperative to do so for people like me.

I was naive. Before ‘Larrikins,’ I thought passion, hard work, and a skill set will mean that anything you want to do will get done. I don’t think that anymore.

I’m as strict as my parents – I have high expectations, too. I’d never ask the kids to do something outside their capabilities, but I’ll encourage them not to be lazy and to try hard.

I have come to the conclusion there is no point making anything if you’re not going to make people laugh and cry.

I’ve spent years on stage adjusting the timing of a line to infinitesimal degrees.

I like stories, and I really like words. So I like stories that rely on dialogue.

You do get a bit paranoid that you’re becoming a sort of narcissist, an artistic solipsist when you’re doing stand-up.

Trying to work out where you find meaning and sense in a meaningless world is my obsession.

Because I’m on my own on stage and wear bare feet and look like a pixie, people always think I’m little.

I played piano for cabaret stars and stuff and then eventually moved from my hometown of Perth in Western Australia to Melbourne, and somewhere in there, I decided to book myself a room and do a cabaret show of my own material.

When I was 17, I rewrote the songs for a musicalized version of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost.’

Fight for what is true. What is true is enough.

I’m not a total chump. I write stuff that’s reasonably musically complex.

I have these rhyme-based ideas because I love Julia Donaldson. ‘The Snail and the Whale’ is one of the most beautiful poems, and I feel like I could do that.

I’m the son of a surgeon and the grandson of a surgeon.

If there was Twitter when I wrote some of my early stuff, there’d be no ‘Matilda.’

When you become successful, half the population puts you on a pedestal, and half the population treats you with less respect than you would have got if you were collecting their bins.

There’s a lot of great, talented, passionate musical theatre practitioners and directors here. But it’s very hard to suddenly start building great musicals in a town like Sydney where there hasn’t been any great musicals built.

When I came into comedy in 2005, I didn’t even know there was discrimination against musical comics in the alternative-comedy strain.

Comedy actually works best when you’re living in an OK world, and you are pointing out the hypocrisy in apathy.

Trouble is, I’m not a real ginger. I’m just a ginger-bearded, pale-skinned, strawberry blond.

In terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets.

My most visceral childhood memory is getting home from hockey. Much of our family time revolved around hockey, and it rains a lot in Perth, and we’d get home tired and wet in our tracksuits, and the smell I’d hold in my nose is of mother’s vegetable soup.

I was incredibly jealous of friends who had bit parts in ‘Home and Away.’ I just hoped I’d somehow be allowed into this game.

Every song in ‘Groundhog Day’ works to forward the story in a chronological, narrative sense, to illuminate the state of mind of the person singing it and comment on the world.

I often get references to ‘slight’ or whatever, and my weight’s been a thing for me my whole life. I have to really, really work. I train six times a week to just be normal and not be fat.