If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.

I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.

When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.

I don't like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.

If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.

The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.

Actually the best thing I did was to get thrown out by my wife. She's living with a fitness instructor. He drinks that yellow stuff in tins. He's an idiot.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

The world I live in is loathsome to me, but I feel one with the men who suffer in it

The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.

We must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet. However, that requires a change in lifestyle, a change in the economic model: We must go from capitalism to socialism.

I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.

The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust.

Writer advice... Write. Finish things. Go for walks. Read a lot & outside your comfort zone. Stay interested. Daydream. Write.

Dear to the heart of a girl is her own beauty and charm.

If all the harps in the world were burned down, still inside the heart there will be hidden music playing.

The further forward we go, the further back we have to explore in order to go forward again.