"What surprises me is when people give me their mobile number. The other day, someone on a bus asked if I swear. I said I try not to, but of course I'm just a normal person"
About this Quote
Celebrity, in Parker's telling, isn't a spotlight so much as an awkward social experiment: strangers trying to decide whether a recognizable face is also a safe, normal one. The "surprise" at being handed a mobile number flips the usual script. We expect famous people to be insulated, unreachable; he frames access as the weird part, not adoration. That small inversion does a lot of work, because it hints at how modern fame has collapsed distance. Phones are intimacy now. A number isn't just contact info, it's an invitation to cross a boundary.
Then comes the bus anecdote, which lands like a tiny absurdist sketch. "Do you swear?" is a strange question to ask anyone, but it's especially telling when aimed at an actor: the stranger isn't really asking about vocabulary, they're asking whether the public persona matches their private expectation of decency. Parker's answer, carefully hedged ("I try not to"), performs politeness while refusing sainthood. The tag line - "of course I'm just a normal person" - is the quiet punch. It's defensive without being bitter, a reminder that fame doesn't cancel ordinary habits and flaws.
The subtext is about the exhausting demand for moral legibility. In a culture that treats actors as both entertainment products and personal companions, strangers feel entitled to access (the phone number) and to judgment (the swearing test). Parker plays it lightly, but the joke is also a boundary marker: you can recognize me, but you don't get to rewrite me.
Then comes the bus anecdote, which lands like a tiny absurdist sketch. "Do you swear?" is a strange question to ask anyone, but it's especially telling when aimed at an actor: the stranger isn't really asking about vocabulary, they're asking whether the public persona matches their private expectation of decency. Parker's answer, carefully hedged ("I try not to"), performs politeness while refusing sainthood. The tag line - "of course I'm just a normal person" - is the quiet punch. It's defensive without being bitter, a reminder that fame doesn't cancel ordinary habits and flaws.
The subtext is about the exhausting demand for moral legibility. In a culture that treats actors as both entertainment products and personal companions, strangers feel entitled to access (the phone number) and to judgment (the swearing test). Parker plays it lightly, but the joke is also a boundary marker: you can recognize me, but you don't get to rewrite me.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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