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

Laurie: "I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done."

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

Laurie: "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."

Laurie: "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."

Laurie: "I think pain is a very - it's an extremely hard thing to empathize moment to moment. And you often don't remember your own pain, you know, that moment that you broke a limb or you burned yourself or, I think, this is a common thing that women talk about with childbirth, that the memory of the pain is hard to summon up and relive, thankfully."

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

Laurie: "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."

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

Laurie: "I never went to drama school, I don't have any certificates saying: 'He's a qualified actor.' But I did think that 'House' was something I didn't have to apologise for. It was something I was really proud of and it was sort of... whether you liked it or not, it was undeniable."

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

Laurie: "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."

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

Laurie: "I'm reasonably easygoing. Messing up my lines or making a fool of myself is where you find my fears. Like a lot of English people, I'm prey to embarrassment - the dread that everyone's sort of sniggering at you, that you're going to look like an idiot. I think that sort of halts us all."

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

Laurie: "I think of House as a deeply moral character, though some would no doubt argue with me. He does not judge. Beyond his normal tetchiness, there were no more than a half-dozen moments of actual condemnation from him. He understood lies and also why you lied, and there was an absolution there that is very, very appealing."

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

Laurie: "I personally believe that the iPod is a frankly corrosive device because it encourages you to surround yourself with your favorites. The whole idea of a playlist is to surround yourself with your favorite things, and the interesting thing is that when you do that, they cease to be your favorites."

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