Top 50 Graham Norton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A good rule to remember for life is that when it comes to plastic surgery and sushi, never be attracted by a bargain.”

— Graham Norton

2. “All my interesting stories are from before I was on television. Nothing interesting has happened to me since then. Maybe it’s because the most interesting thing in my life is the show and that’s on telly.”

— Graham Norton

3. “I don’t think you should have to try to be nice, I think most people are nice. I think being cheerful and nice is just a politeness.”

— Graham Norton

4. “I am very quick to judge.”

— Graham Norton

5. “In my experience the difference between a straight and a bisexual is about four pints.”

— Graham Norton

6. “All my day is spent dealing with other people. When I come home I like it to be empty. The presence of others in my house kind of annoys me. I love coming home and shutting the doors. I feel brain dead. I’m relatively available, but not to live with.”

— Graham Norton

7. “I always say I’d rather be miserable by myself than unhappy in a relationship.”

— Graham Norton

8. “You don’t want money to make you a social freak where you can only hang out with rich people.”

— Graham Norton

9. “I am camp. Lots of gay men can’t cope with their campness. They are in denial about it.”

— Graham Norton

10. “I’m actually quite self-sufficient, so it might look as if there isn’t room for anyone in my life. That isn’t entirely the case.”

— Graham Norton

11. “Tolerance is forced on people in London.”

— Graham Norton

12. “I’d like to retire at 50 but I don’t want to sell papers in the middle of London on a Zimmer.”

— Graham Norton

13. “It’s lovely to get one successful show – the chances of finding a second one are not so hot.”

— Graham Norton

14. “My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.”

— Graham Norton

15. “Some people think they’re depressed and they go to the doctor and want pills. And you just think: ‘You hate where you live, you’ve lost your job, your boyfriend has dumped you, could all this be why you’re depressed?’”

— Graham Norton

16. “Life had taught them well. Feelings were to be feared, pain was to be avoided at all cost, and if that meant not experiencing joy, then so be it.”

— Graham Norton

17. “Where I get bored is when I show up for a shoot and they want me to wear a feather boa. Too obvious a thing for a poof on the telly to do.”

— Graham Norton

18. “I’ve heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt ‘foreign.’ Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: ‘I’m a Protestant.’ It wasn’t until I left, I thought: ‘Oh, those weren’t Protestant feelings.’”

— Graham Norton

19. “I am really bad at actually interviewing people.”

— Graham Norton

20. “My life could have been so grim really, really grim.”

— Graham Norton

21. “Forty freaked me out. I didn’t see it coming. My life was in a state of chaos – I was moving jobs and moving house – and it just hit me like a ton of bricks.”

— Graham Norton

22. “I don’t think anyone wants to be gay.”

— Graham Norton

23. “Britain’s such a twisted, weird little place.”

— Graham Norton

24. “One of the great things about being gay and out is that the papers couldn’t care less about your love life.”

— Graham Norton

25. “I have nothing to say about my childhood. It was a perfectly pleasant upbringing – it’s not like it was unhappy or anything.”

— Graham Norton

26. “The higher your profile becomes, the more aware you are that people out there might hate you.”

— Graham Norton

27. “I loved Lucille Ball growing up.”

— Graham Norton

28. “You don’t want to be hard to look at. Plain very good, hard to look at bad. The plain shall inherit the earth; time is our friend.”

— Graham Norton

29. “The only people who are desperate to go on the show are people we’re desperate not to have on the show.”

— Graham Norton

30. “I’m often dating people, but I don’t say it because you sort of know it won’t last long.”

— Graham Norton

31. “The BBC is a victim of its own independence.”

— Graham Norton

32. “Straight men just can’t imagine the bliss of being in a relationship with someone who finds farting as funny as they do.”

— Graham Norton

33. “All these people I interview are worth ten times what I’m worth.”

— Graham Norton

34. “Occasionally the state of the planet can knock me off my perky perch.”

— Graham Norton

35. “Because society places a value on masculinity, gay men aspire to it. If you go to a gay club and the doorman says, ‘You do realise this is a gay club, don’t you lads?’ you get all excited because you think, ‘Wow, he thought I was straight!’”

— Graham Norton

36. “I don’t think I’ve got bad taste. I’ve got no taste.”

— Graham Norton

37. “It sounds deeply shallow, but for brief spells every member of the public can be fascinating.”

— Graham Norton

38. “If it was possible for me to adopt, I probably would, but no one’s going to let me adopt.”

— Graham Norton

39. “I do get pleasure from very inconsequential things, like shopping for clothes.”

— Graham Norton

40. “Well, certainly I think American television is – that’s proper TV.”

— Graham Norton

41. “Funerals see the end of a life but at the party afterwards, it is like a form of resurrection: the person we have just said goodbye to is back in the room as people share their tales. The.”

— Graham Norton

42. “I’ve so exceeded what I ever wanted to do.”

— Graham Norton

43. “Those years between drama school and getting onto the stand-up circuit were pretty lean.”

— Graham Norton

44. “Duneen had somehow managed to slip through the World Wide Web. No 4G, no 3G, no signal.”

— Graham Norton

45. “I was a failed actor but I still wanted to show off, so I ended up doing live comedy.”

— Graham Norton

46. “Do I have more depth than I’m given credit for? No!”

— Graham Norton

47. “Always remember, if you decide to come to the showbiz party the dress code is ‘Thick Skin’. Our.”

— Graham Norton

48. “He remembered that it had been a warm evening in early September. He had made his way up past the school but was beginning to regret his route. The road was much steeper than he had imagined and he was getting quite short of breath and was coated in a slick of sweat that was making his clothes stick to him.”

— Graham Norton

49. “An awful lot of female celebrities are very beautiful whereas a lot of male celebrities are not so hot.”

— Graham Norton

50. “I think the word is adult!”

— Graham Norton