31 Peter Sellers Quotes

Peter Sellers quotes

1. Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.

2. Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!

   Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

3. Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!

4. We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now do we Jack?

5. Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!

6. It won't be easy, that is why I have always failed where others have succeeded.

7. Conversation like television set on honeymoon... unnecessary.

8. No, you see, there is no me. I do not exist ... There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.

9. I like to watch.

10. Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this...

11. I feel ghostly unreal until I become somebody else again on the screen.

12. I writhe when I see myself on the screen. I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, 'Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?' I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working.

13. If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.

14. I'm a classic example of all humorists - only funny when I'm working.

15. To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience.

16. You have to live before you die, or you'll die before you live.

17. Peter Sellers, a showbiz baby, was carried onstage two weeks into his life by vaudevillian Dickie Henderson, who encouraged the audience to join him in singing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.' Little Peter instantly burst into tears and the audience erupted into laughter and applause. From Pete's perspective, this emotional scenario was played out more or less consistently until his death in 1980.

1. When I look at myself, I see a person who strangely lacks what I consider the ingredients of a personality.

2. Vocal music is an attempt to take the whole human being and project it into space. It is the ultimate gesture of getting out of yourself. You take a part of you that is most private, most personal, most inward and you hurl it out into space - you project it as far as you can. That gesture of opining this whole region of the body results in an enormous spiritual release, and is felt by other people with tremendous impact.

3. Dad was convinced always that I was going to be a road sweeper.

4. Is there anybody hiding there in the dark?

5. I believe in astrology and the spirits. I'm a Virgo myself.

6. Now then, what do we know? One, that Professor Fassbinder and his daughter have been kidnapped. Two, that someone has kidnapped them. Three, that my hand is on fire.

7. I might have got somewhere with 'The Ladykillers,' but forty minutes were cut. A lot of me was cut with that forty minutes.

8. Women are more difficult to handle than men. It's their minds.

9. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.

10. My mum very much wanted me to go into the theatre.

11. I've had three marriages end in disaster. Lynne knew the score when she married me. It was always just a matter of time before she became the fourth ex-Mrs. Peter Sellers.

12. Facts - behind them lies the whole fabric of deductive truth.

13. I look in the mirror, and what I see is someone who has never grown up - a crashing sentimentalist who alternates between great heights and black depths.

14. It depends on whom I'm with. Sometimes I start out in my own voice, and no matter who I'm with, I take on their thing.