Top 35 Mark Gatiss Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I prefer sneaking in the back door.”

— Mark Gatiss

2. “I’m terribly nostalgic, but I’m with the Elizabethans who thought nostalgia was a disease. It’s a dangerous place to be because you can get caught up in it.”

— Mark Gatiss

3. “Intuitions are not to be ignored, John. They represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend.”

— Mark Gatiss

4. “It’s a cliche, but it’s true that all the fun lies in baddies, grotesques and comic roles.”

— Mark Gatiss

5. “They are called ‘Emos’ now, and before that they were ‘Goths.’ They didn’t have a name for it when I was one, but I was that black-wearing teenager and yes, I wore a little eyeliner.”

— Mark Gatiss

6. “I think a lot of people who say they are bisexual aren’t.”

— Mark Gatiss

7. “A better time. A simpler time,′ said the Doctor. ‘That’s what we all yearn for. The pain of wanting to belong somewhere. To go home.”

— Mark Gatiss

8. “One man’s fish is another man’s poisson.”

— Mark Gatiss

9. “Fear is an underrated emotion. And that’s why I think it’s very dangerous to try and cosset children from it. A healthy scare is as good as as a healthy laugh. In fact, they’re two sides of the same coin. There is a desire to shield from the knocks and bumps of reality.”

— Mark Gatiss

10. “When I was your age – about, ooh, a thousand years ago – I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek’s New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.”

— Mark Gatiss

11. “When I was seven or eight, I was bought a fantastic book called ‘The Movie Treasury of Horror Movies’ by Alan G. Frank; it became my bible. It’s packed full of the most amazing photos and is still fantastic to look at.”

— Mark Gatiss

12. “I love the Shakespeare history plays; I love the struggle for the crown as a plot.”

— Mark Gatiss

13. “I always wanted to do Restoration comedy. It seems like so much fun.”

— Mark Gatiss

14. “I always compare reading anything on the Internet to listening at doors. If you don’t want to hear anything bad about yourself, you should never do it.”

— Mark Gatiss

15. “Even when I was a child, I always wanted to be older. I realised just in time that it’s a mistake and to enjoy my youth while I had it.”

— Mark Gatiss

16. “It was all quite ghastly and I was very fond of it.”

— Mark Gatiss

17. “I had a girlfriend before I ever had a boyfriend, but it was just a phase.”

— Mark Gatiss

18. “I am a gay man who loves James Bond films and snooker – all kinds of working-class pursuits.”

— Mark Gatiss

19. “I don’t care what other people think any more about me writing my own parts.”

— Mark Gatiss

20. “I grew up with low self-esteem. I didn’t think I was very pretty. I had glasses, red hair and was generally quite a spod.”

— Mark Gatiss

21. “The thing is, horror is a big part of ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there’s a lot more horror in ‘Holmes’ that people possibly think of. There’s a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares.”

— Mark Gatiss

22. “Any time, any place, any where. He’s not called Doctor Martini, is he?”

— Mark Gatiss

23. “If not exactly raging against the dying of the light, I was at least a little cross with it.”

— Mark Gatiss

24. “He was an American, so it seemed only fair to shoot him.”

— Mark Gatiss

25. “I love going to galleries, particularly the National Portrait Gallery.”

— Mark Gatiss

26. “Benedict is bumbly, sweet, affable; the nicest man you’ve met.”

— Mark Gatiss

27. “My dad was quite a forbidding figure. I realise now that that was mainly because he worked so hard. He wasn’t unkind, but he was a presence.”

— Mark Gatiss

28. “All films speak to their times. It becomes obvious only after.”

— Mark Gatiss

29. “I used to go to the gym regularly and swim an awful lot, but that was when I was unemployed and knew leisure intimately.”

— Mark Gatiss

30. “Slightly forgettable movies can sometimes make great musicals.”

— Mark Gatiss

31. “Me having the right to get married doesn’t take anything away from anyone else. Rights aren’t like cake: me having some doesn’t mean you get less.”

— Mark Gatiss

32. “Sci-fi and fantasy used to be a TV staple throughout my childhood. Then it just stopped dead. It was seen as culty, a minority interest.”

— Mark Gatiss

33. “I’m a great believer in the beauty and the power of surprise.”

— Mark Gatiss

34. “All pleasure should be a little bent, don’t you think?”

— Mark Gatiss

35. “Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it’s like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars.”

— Mark Gatiss

36. “I’m an actor and a writer, that’s how I think of myself. Sometimes my time is divided equally, sometimes less equally, but that’s what I do.”

— Mark Gatiss

37. “At school I briefly wanted to be a palaeontologist, but I was no good at chemistry and physics.”

— Mark Gatiss

38. “The first film I can remember seeing on TV was ‘The Brides of Dracula.’ I was instantly hooked.”

— Mark Gatiss

39. “You know, the Elizabethans thought nostalgia was a diagnosable disease. Perhaps they were right.”

— Mark Gatiss