Ricky Gervais Quotes - Page 6

A joke isn't yours. It's used and you don't know where it's been.

Someone trying to be funny probably isn't as funny as someone who doesn't want to be funny but is and can't help it. Someone being serious or angry might be funny. If you get angry, the first thing I want to do is laugh because I don't know why you're getting that angry. Pathos makes me laugh, funerals make me laugh.

I've worked in an office. People are sitting down doing their stuff, or pretending to do their stuff, and they're bored. I've heard a car tire screech and 30 people went to the window. That was a piece of excitement in their day, that a car might have had to stop quickly, you know. You don't need dinosaurs, you know.

It will be great to play a short, fat sweaty loser for a change.

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'm not a person that's easily embarrassed, but I'm embarrassed for other people.

I feel that a lot of British comedy is often too bombastic, too obvious, dressing up and shouting and pulling funny faces.

The terrible thing in England is if you interview a thousand people, five hundred of them will talk like they're going into a Guy Ritchie movie and the other five hundred will be Mr. Darcy. So we had to find cool, working class kids with no profile who could be John Travolta and James Dean and people like that.

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?

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."

I'm not from around these parts. I'm from a little place called England: we used to run the world before you.

People have let me down in the past. I've loved something, and it's become a disgrace. I'd rather start again.

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?

Same-sex marriage is not a gay privilege, it's equal rights.

It's quite easy to make a load of people laugh, it's often a reflex action, but I think to make them cry is harder without manipulating them.

If I do eat meat, it's got to be ethical. I want to know that it lived a great life before it was killed humanely.

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.

Funny bones, to me, are more important than funny lines. If a comedian is just not likable and doing the lines, you could read them yourself. Whereas if someone [you like] shambles out, and they tell you what a bad day they've had, they don't have to say anything. I love them. I want to hug them because they've been through something. And it comes back to empathy, always empathy.

Wearing cosmetics that were tested on animals makes you ugly on the inside

I've never done anything for the common consensus. I do things to please me. If you are happy with something yourself, you become bulletproof.

I don't think a comedian should even be concerned with being cool or sexy, as soon as you do, you aren't a comedian any more. Looks are still the most important thing for women when it comes to meeting a partner. And that's fair enough, but a sense of humour is really important too. For starters, it's a great indicator of whether you are going to get on. If the first time you go on a date you don't find each other funny, there's a fundamental problem.

There's a difference between a job and a career - if you're the boss you don't stop at six o'clock, you have to worry about everything all the time.

I think, as a comedian, the funniest you can be is with people you know, and [whom] you've known for years, in a pub. That's as funny as you get, and so the aim [while stand-up] is to get that funny on stage with 5,000 strangers, to get that funny in a room where people shouldn't be listening but they are.

You try to make characters you care about, and I think realism helps. Even though this is a high concept, the characters have got to be real.

Hollywood is responsible for some of the greatest and worst movies of all time!