I'm quite a compulsive person-I only worked this out recently - I'm compulsive, but I'm also very indecisive. I don't know what I want, but I know that I want it now.

People will kill you over time, and how they'll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like 'be realistic.'

Money can't buy you love, but it can get you some really good chocolate ginger biscuits.

Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical.

You’re not an adult at all - you're just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don't understand...

Don't do it! Stay away from your potential. You'll mess it up, it's potential, leave it. Anyway, it's like your bank balance - you always have a lot less than you think.

Oh how I hate you. I hate you so much it gives me energy. I have to get up early in the morning just to hate you, because there's not enough time in the day! Please GO AWAY!

I don't do drugs. If I want a rush I just stand up when I'm not expecting it.

I think you should, yeah. You should wash your beard, then shave it off, nail it to a Frisbee and fling it over a rainbow.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

I think a lot of the time you just parody yourself.

Don't step backward toward nothing, step forward toward something, better awkward steps forward, than coward steps backward.

This is the us you wanted us to be, Gwen.

When others try to provoke (instigate) you and you don’t get provoked, it is known as a spiritual victory.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.

I never wanted to be a director.

I appear wild on the outside, but I'm a conservative businessman.

But Nature cast me for the part she found me best fitted for, and I have had to play it, and must play it till the curtain falls.

I could be a bit of a pain in the arse. Since I've come out of my cancer, I must say I intend to be even more of a pain in the arse.

Control is the source of strategic power.

Of all the phantoms fleeting in the mist Of time, though meagre all and ghostly thin; Most unsubstantial, unessential shade Was earthly fame.