Top 100 Richard Osman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “It’s great to be the fastest runner, but not when you’re running in the wrong direction.”

— Richard Osman

2. “Days of death are days when we weigh our relationship with love in our bare hands. Days when we remember what has gone, and fear what is to come. The joy love brings, and the price we pay. When we give thanks but also pray for mercy.”

— Richard Osman

3. “Like someone reached in and took out my heart and my lungs and told me to keep living. Keep waking up, keep eating, keep putting one foot in front of the other. For what? I don’t think I ever really found an answer to that.”

— Richard Osman

4. “Normal is an illusory concept, Bogdan,” adds Ibrahim.”

— Richard Osman

5. “Because sometimes you had to remember that life wasn’t always arranged in alphabetical order, however much you would like it to be.”

— Richard Osman

6. “One day, spring will come without her.”

— Richard Osman

7. “That’s all it was in the end. People were always trying to tell you something, and all you really had to do was let them.”

— Richard Osman

8. “Was he a content man, doing the things he liked alone? Or was he a lonely man making the best out of what he had? Alone, or lonely?”

— Richard Osman

9. “You can’t expect favours without being asked to repay them. So what was it to be?”

— Richard Osman

10. “It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?” says Viktor. “It’s always the people. You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.”

— Richard Osman

11. “The weather forecasters,” continues Elizabeth, “and here that’s me and Ibrahim – we always have our fingers in the air, trying to feel which way the wind is blowing. We never want to be surprised or caught out.”

— Richard Osman

12. “I’m involved about as much as I want to be with the Thursday Murder Club. If they can plant cocaine in someone’s cistern, I don’t want to think about what they’d do with my love life.”

— Richard Osman

13. “Day after day, mission after mission, ridding the world of evil? Waiting for the last devil to die? What a joke. New devils will always spring up, like daffodils in springtime.”

— Richard Osman

14. “I am not a vegan and have no intention of ever becoming one, but I still feel like it’s something that should be encouraged. I read that if mankind doesn’t stop eating meat, there will be mass starvation by 2050. With respect, I am nearly eighty, and so this won’t be my problem, but I do hope they sort it out.”

— Richard Osman

15. “There is another dating app for gay men called Grindr. Perhaps it’s for gay women too? I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Would they use the same one? That would be nice.”

— Richard Osman

16. “It was the perfect trip, and as far as Stephen was concerned, the whole weekend was one magical accident. And that’s because he is the weather, and I am the weather forecaster. He believes in fate, while I am fate.”

— Richard Osman

17. “God cries every time someone lies to a Canadian.”

— Richard Osman

18. “We are all gone in the blink of an eye, and there is nothing to do but live while you’re waiting.”

— Richard Osman

19. “And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never traveled anywhere interesting.”

— Richard Osman

20. “I am glad I had a daughter instead of a son, though. At least I see her.”

— Richard Osman

21. “Some people love their children more than they love their partner,’ says Ibrahim, ’and some people love their partner more than their children. And no one can ever admit to either thing.”

— Richard Osman

22. “If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.”

— Richard Osman

23. “Everyone who dies is alive. We call people “dead” because we need a word for it, but “dead” just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.”

— Richard Osman

24. “What if pretending to enjoy life is the same as actually enjoying it? He has been smiling from the moment Patrice arrived, so perhaps there was something in it.”

— Richard Osman

25. “Whatever they say about time healing, some things in life just break and can never be fixed.”

— Richard Osman

26. “We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn’t fall behind. But it doesn’t, you see. Time just swirls around us. Every thing is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here?”

— Richard Osman

27. “Donna has always been headstrong, always acted quickly and decisively. Which is a fine quality when you are right, but a liability when you are wrong. It’s great to be the fastest runner, but not when you’re running in the wrong direction.”

— Richard Osman

28. “If you are disappointed with your face, eventually it shows.”

— Richard Osman

29. “What is it about Christmas? Everything that’s wrong seems worse, and everything that’s right seems better.”

— Richard Osman

30. “If life ever seems too complicated, if you think no one can help, sometimes the right person to turn to is an eight-year-old.”

— Richard Osman

31. “Love always finds a language.”

— Richard Osman

32. “I’m sure,” says Elizabeth. “If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.”

— Richard Osman

33. “There are scars, yes, but that at least means the bleeding has stopped.”

— Richard Osman

34. “It was best to grab everything while you could. Who knows when your final swim might come, your final walk, your final kiss?”

— Richard Osman

35. “It was a community, and in Ibrahim’s opinion that was how human beings were designed to live. At Coopers Chase, anytime you wanted to be alone, you would simply close your front door, and anytime you wanted to be with people, you would open it up again. If there was a better recipe for happiness than that, then Ibrahim was yet to hear it.”

— Richard Osman

36. “No animal is better than any other animal. We are all just a collection of atoms smashed together. Even people. Even trees.”

— Richard Osman

37. “Who killed Tony Curran though? Ventham. Typical Blairite.”

— Richard Osman

38. “I don’t know why we’re on this earth,” says Stephen. “Truly I don’t. But if I wanted to find the answer, I would begin with how much I love you.”

— Richard Osman

39. “I’m afraid I don’t know WTF. I only discovered LOL from Joyce last week. I’m going to assume that it doesn’t refer to the Warsaw Transit Facility, as that was shut down in 1981 when the Russians came sniffing.”

— Richard Osman

40. “I would never have therapy, because who wants to unravel all that knitting?”

— Richard Osman

41. “No kneeling for him these days, though, arthritis and Catholicism being an uneasy mix.”

— Richard Osman

42. “He eats salmon and broccoli now. He eats so much broccoli he can spell it without looking it up.”

— Richard Osman

43. “That twinkle in his eye was undimmed. The twinkle that gave an entirely undeserved suggestion of wisdom and charm. The twinkle that could make you walk down the aisle with a man almost ten years your junior and regret it within months. The twinkle you soon realize is actually the beam of a lighthouse, warning you off the rocks.”

— Richard Osman

44. “I’m afraid I don’t know WTF. I only discovered LOL from Joyce last week.”

— Richard Osman

45. “I remember dabbing at my mouth before I answered, like you see on television sometimes. It makes you look clever, try it.”

— Richard Osman

46. “Everything is about death, you see.’ ‘Well, recently, yes,’ agrees Joyce. ‘But surely not everything? That seems a bit much?’ ‘In essence,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Our existence only makes sense because of it; it provides meaning to our narrative. Our direction of travel is always towards it. Our behaviour is either because we fear it, or because we choose to deny it. We could drive past this spot once a year, every year, and neither the horse nor ourselves would get younger. Everything is death.”

— Richard Osman

47. “Whereas Joyce and Ron, you are the weather,” says Elizabeth. “You move as you choose, you act as you feel. You make things happen without fannying around worrying about what those things might be.”

— Richard Osman

48. “You must die before your children, of course, because you have taught them to live without you. But not your dog.”

— Richard Osman

49. “Joyce doesn’t take her seriously, Ibrahim doesn’t take her seriously, Ron doesn’t take her seriously. They respect her, she thinks, they know they can rely on her, they take care of her – shudder – but they refuse to take her seriously. Who knew that was the secret all along?”

— Richard Osman

50. “And, by the by, Joanna solved the mystery of my private messages. She went into my account and searched all of them for me. She told me that if I didn’t want to be sent an endless tide of photographs of men’s genitals, I should really change my username. Needless to say, I haven’t changed it.”

— Richard Osman