I think my father gave me a great reverence for medical science. He was about as opposite to the personality of House as one could imagine. He was polite and easygoing, and would have gone to great lengths to make his patients feel attended to and heard and sympathized with.

Lots of people would say House doesn't have any charm at all. I would disagree, though: I find him immensely charming and endlessly entertaining. He has a sort of grace and a wit about him, and ultimately, I think he is on the side of the angels.

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

I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.

Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be.

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

It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to make a blues record.

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

I don't have a single complete show or movie or anything else that I could look at and say, 'Nailed that one.' But endless dissatisfaction is, I suppose, what gets us out of bed in the morning.

I don't like the act of talking; it makes me slightly light-headed.

I think there is a basic comfort in clever people who know things.

My dad gave me my first bike at 16. I soon fell off and was in a wheelchair for weeks. I haven't fallen since.

I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.

I have been instrumental in banning bottled water on the set. It hasn't gone that well with the crew... so I replaced it with tequila.

I didn't realize House would be the central character, more the bitter comic relief appearing occasionally. I relish his wounded nature - the lameness, the scarred Byronic hero.

I couldn't imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much.

I feel like I'm working on an oil rig right now. I'm away from home a lot.

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

I never was someone who was at ease with happiness.

I think actors are attracted to the idea of other identities and concealing themselves behind some other identity.

Unhappiness is an unfinished state; happy people don't need our help.

I don't talk like House, or walk like him. I certainly don't think like him. I don't like to think for more than 15 minutes at a stretch actually; I am a fragile flower.

I do actually like Los Angeles. Partly because I was told I wouldn't.

You hope that your teenage self would like and forgive your 50-year-old self.

Believe it or not, perhaps I don't show it much, or well, but I think I like people.

I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.

I have resolved to pick one novel and just read it over and over again for the rest of my life, because I cannot remember anything anymore.

To be a head boy, you have to be very clever, you have to be a scholar, and I was never a scholar in any shape or form.

Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.

I hate menus, I hate choosing food. I just want to be brought. Bring me dinner!

Seems to me that this business, for actors anyway, is not so much about whether or not you do good work. It's about whether or not you get the chance to do good work.

I run six-to-eight miles a day, plus weights and aerobics in the lunch hour. I also lie a lot, which keeps me thin.

They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that. It's not that the British are more honest - you're just under no illusion with them.

It doesn't rain at all in California. Once a month, a man drives through spraying Evian.

Acting is largely about putting on masks, and music is about removing them.

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.

The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.

I've never been clever with money. I will buy anything at the top of the market.

Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.

I really do believe the camera steals the soul. But that may be because I'm worried about my soul. I don't have much of a soul to begin with; I can't afford to lose much.

When the ship goes down, the waves very quickly roll over the top of it, and attention shifts elsewhere. It's just the natural order of things in TV - in life - and is as it should be.

One great benefit of not being on TV every week is that people will be a lot less interested in what I have in my supermarket basket. I could even un-tint my car windows - or at least opt for a lighter shade.

It alarms me to think of all that I have read and how little of it has stayed with me.

I never thought I'd end up living in Los Angeles while my children grew up in Britain, but here I am, and we are all making the best of it.

The strange thing - and this is one of the advantages of being incredibly shallow and superficial - is that wherever I am, that's sort of home.

The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.

Even the greatest poets, I think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human - I was gonna say mind, but it's actually the entire body. It somehow seems to infuse the entire body.

Muddy Waters, I suppose, was my first great hero. You know, every boy wants to be a guitar player, and Muddy Waters was just the king. He was the King Bee. He was it.

I have always stuck up for Western medicine. You can chew all the celery you want, but without antibiotics, three quarters of us would not be here.

The financing of all TV shows is dictated by finding an audience between 18 and 49. I have now passed beyond 49, so probably, I am no longer a desirable commodity for TV. And I am at peace with that; that's fine.