Nina Conti Quotes & Sayings

“It's sad, the lottery. Good projects get funded by it, but there's an air of desperation about it.”

“My puppets are far more liberated than I am. Ventriloquism is a useful way of expressing myself.”

“The character of the monkey just grew from something out of his face and my granddad's personality. They fused, and that's what I ended up with! The monkey belonged to a friend of mine, and I saw that it had such a little beguiling face and it grew from there.”

“Having a puppet is a way of having opposing opinions - I say a thing; he says the other.”

“I think I've got it pretty easy compared with somebody who works at a desk nine to five. I'm just working for an hour in the evening. I get a bit breathless, as I have to talk non-stop because of the puppets.”

“I could never be on stage on my own. But puppets can say things that humans can't say.”

“I like my squishy, red, high-heeled Vivienne Westwood jelly shoes. They make you seem like you're much more of a go-er.”

“If I have a gig in the evening, I get 'the doom' at about 5 P.M., when I think I'm getting flu.”

“The way I talk to the puppets is real, and it's in the moment, and it's seeing what will happen. It's not something that is scripted.”

“I looked into studying psychoanalysis, wrote to the governing body and was about to start the year where they psychoanalyse you, four times a week, before you get to do it yourself. I just thought I'd taken the ventriloquism as far as I could. My act is so deconstructive, and I'd made all the monkey jokes anyone wanted to hear.”