Quotes from Ricky Gervais

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've got re-addicted to normal people, which is the loveliest thing to write about.

That's the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

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'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.

You can laugh at anything. It depends on the joke.

I think you can make fun of anything except things people can't help. They can't help their race or their sex or their age, so you ridicule their pretension or their ego instead. You can ridicule ideas - ideas don't have feelings. You can ridicule an idea that someone holds without hurting them.

I know how much embarrassment hurts, and I love it as a theme because you can keep digging a hole. It's just an endless well, embarrassment.

I haven't had my teeth fixed, I haven't had a hair transplant. I haven't had a skin peel, tummy tuck. I've done literally nothing.

Cynicism, to me, is trying to make people as unhappy as you are.

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.

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.