Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Growing up, the most important thing, after taking care of your family and getting a decent job of work, was having a laugh. That was the point to life.
I stand by 'I'm not going to do 'The Office' again.' That would be weird: all the same people sitting at the same desks at a paper merchant's in Slough.
I always knew I had to be 100 percent in charge, even when I was a middle manager. I used to say to my boss, "Just give me enough rope and then fire me."
There's no difference between fame and infamy now. There's a new school of professional famous people that don't do anything. They don't create anything.
I still see myself as a bit of a cottage industry. Being in a room creating stuff and seeing if anyone wants it, as opposed to going to work for someone.
When people say to me: would you rather be thought of as a funny man or a great boss? My answer's always the same, to me, they're not mutually exclusive.
If David Brent is the best thing that I ever come up with, then so be it. What are you supposed to do, time the best thing you do for just before you die?
Everything you do is autobiographical. Yeah, I grew up in a town called Redding and I had older brothers and sisters so it's all my memories of growing up.
Making people laugh is easy for me. I'm quite proud of that. But I'm prouder of silencing an audience for a minute because they're thinking about something.
I remember asking my mum when I was about 13, 'Why are my brothers and sister so much older than me?' And she just said, 'You were a mistake.' And I laughed.
As an artist, you want as many people as possible to see your work with no interference. And usually, I've gone onto fringe channels: BBC Two, HBO, Channel 4.
I wanted to be clever, but being funny came first. That's how you know someone is clever. They don't come out and tell you pi to 13 places - they tell you a joke.
Growing up, the two things that made my blood boil were religious intolerance and animal cruelty. I’ve never understood it. I can’t stand to have an animal in pain.
I'm quite squeamish, really. I'm philistine and unsophisticated - not because of my great discerning palate but other reasons. Some are moral grounds, some texture.
I never understood redemption when I was young. Even before I was an atheist, I always thought with the prodigal son, "well, why's he getting the special treatment?"
Our challenge with "The Office" and "Extras" was to get it completely scripted but to find a cast that could make it look like they were saying it for the first time.
I'm not a film snob at all. I much prefer a really good Hollywood blockbuster than a thought-provoking art house movie because entertainment is sort of where it's at.
If you can't joke about the most horrendous things in the world, what's the point of jokes? What's the point in having humor? Humor is to get us over terrible things.
Even if it's such a lowly art as TV, you've got to get stuff off your chest, because that's what makes something different and original, your particular take on stuff.
Real racist jokes or sexist jokes aren't funny - not because they're offensive, but because they're not true. As soon as a joke is based on an untruth, it's not funny.
The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.
The world is not entirely comic and it's not entirely dramatic. You have a laugh and then someone finds a lump and you deal with that. Because that is what life is like.
I can't stand it. I can't stand someone being embarrassed. I don't know why. If someone slips over and the first thing they do is look around, I pretend I haven't seen it.
I want to get all the nations of the world together, it doesn't matter what colour or creed, and I want to sit them down and say: "Guys, The Office is still available on DVD."
Ego is hilarious - especially the vanity of a comedian. As soon as you see one start worrying about how cool he is or about how many stadiums he can fill, he stops being funny.
I had great memories of growing up in a working class estate. I remember it being sunny all the time. So we're putting that on screen. It's not people wallowing in degradation.
You want to see the people you've sort of come to know and love, or love to hate, you want to see them develop in some way. And I hope people get sort of caught up in that arc.
Honor is a gift a man gives himself. You can be as good as anyone that ever lived. If you can read, you can learn everything that anyone ever learned. But you've got to want it.
My favourite shows of the year are House of Cards, the Scandinavian versions of The Killing and The Bridge, and my guilty pleasure is everything MMA. Ultimate Fighter is amazing.
Sometimes being old is used as an insult, which is bizarre because, if you're lucky, that's literally going to happen to you. It's a strange thing to gloat about: being born recently.
I'm basically a 'do unto others' type person. I don't have any religious feelings because I'm an atheist, but I live my life like there's a God. And if there was he'd probably love me.
There was a nobility in poverty when I was growing up. My mom was poor but she was planting roses and she was cleaning the steps, you know what I mean. You didn't feel sorry for yourself.
Trust, encouragement, reward, loyalty... satisfaction. That's what I'm... you know. Trust people and they'll be true to you. Treat them greatly, and they will show themselves to be great.
My greatest hero is Nelson Mandela. What a man. Incarcerated for 25 years, he was released in 1990 and he hasn't reoffended. I think he's going straight, which shows you prison does work.
People think that it's fun to meet celebrities - but what do you mean by "celebrity"? Someone you recognise? What are they famous for? It's people who've done something that are exciting.
I think the social faux par is probably what most people fear... more people fear public speaking than death and that's because we don't want to make a fool of ourselves. It's fundamental.
If you walked around like David Bowie in 1973 in Reading, you'd get beaten up. The 1970s in a small town was more like the 1950s.. and that's the truth. The backdrop was probably Victorian.
I was very protective of my privacy. I didn't want people to write bad things about me that weren't true, because that's just not fair. Fifty percent of everything written about me is wrong.
The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.
I don't live by "The Rules" you know, and if there's one person who has influenced me in that way of thinking, someone who is a maverick, someone who does 'that' to the system then it's Ian Botham.
I feel sorry for people in power. I feel sorry for the Queen, in a way, that she hasn't had a normal life. It'd difficult for me to hate anyone. Immediately someone's unpopular, I feel sorry for them.
I've been nominated four times, never won. And the whole world is going, `Why hasn't Winslet won one?' That's why I'm doing it. "Schindler's Bloody List," "The Pianist," Oscars coming out of their ass.
I remember one review of The Office Christmas Special that compared it unfavourably to Dickens. What? You're saying I'm not as good as the greatest storyteller ever. Boo! Boo! I think I can live with that.
Free speech is one of the most important things to me, but I think it gets confusing when it comes to offense. Because for one, just because you have the right to say anything, it doesn't mean you have to.
Daniel Day-Lewis would play me as a baby. He can do anything. Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt are fighting out for me now. And Meryl Streep will play me after the sex change. I haven't told you about that, have I?
Being an atheist makes someone a clearer thinking, fairer person. They [atheists] are not doing things to be rewarded in heaven; they're doing things because they're right, because they live by a moral code.
I don't like it when I see a racist comedian go up and say, 'What are we gonna do about all these immigrants?' and they get a round the applause. I think, 'Well that's not a joke. That's just your biased opinion.'
I'm a fan of the kind of political correctness that is about not promoting prejudice. But some people in America are offended by equality because when you've had privilege for so long, equality feels like oppression.
The best script in the world doesn't work perfectly when you actually act it out. That's a law. That's a given. So you have to play with everything. And the more fun you have with it, the better the finished product.
There are good and bad critics like good or bad artists. A good critic says why they didn't like it. A bad critic gives it away that they don't like you as a person. I quite like that as well, because it means that I've won.