Ricky Gervais Quotes

It's a fun world to exist in, and I relish doing those movies as much as I do the smaller ones. They're always immense fun. I don't know if I am - unless we do a Benji film, I don't think I am an action hero really.

The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.

Todd Glass has amazing energy on stage. Dave Attell is one of my favorites because he's a one liner comic who is always incredibly in the moment with the audience. As for newer people, I think Adrienne Iapalucci writes some great, dark jokes and Sean Patton has a hilarious voice on stage.

Comedy is not my world. It's difficult for me, but sometimes you just have to go with it and have a good time.

The idea behind doing comedies is that you go home a little happier.

I've never written jokes. I mean, I'll write things on a piece of paper and riff on them onstage.

It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.

Yeah, yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye type of thing. There's that kind of irreverence to it the humor and in the reality of what's really going on that plays into this movie.

What do you call a kid with no arms and an eyepatch? Names.

You're always on duty because you're in a constant state of observation. That's one of the challenges of being a comedian. I think one of the other challenges is that, whether we like it or not, it's a profession that requires failure. It doesn't just encourage failure. It requires it because it's all trial and error. You need to know what doesn't work to know what works.

There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.

I often say that ... I'm just involved in comedy, so I can be around it.

I'm making fun of midwestern homophobia [in the joke], but I'm still saying faggot. And almost every month as I'm doing that joke it gets five percent less of a laugh.

Comedy is a blood sport. It flays the truth and spurts twisted logic. In America, people become comics because we don't have bullfighting.

The best part of being a writer for me is immersing myself in a fictional world, which is the opposite of being on social media. At the same time, if no one ever read my work, if I was writing solely for myself, I bet it would be lonely and a lot less fun.

I love comedy. I suppose comedy is my first love, in a way. I did a lot of acting, funnily enough, unprofessionally, as a kid. From when I was 10 years old until I was about 19, I was always doing little sketches with my friends, and doing different accents and voices. Probably about 3/4 of those were comedic, in some way, and the other 1/4 was more serious stuff or more action or more dramatic little pieces that I would make. But, I tend to lean towards comedy.

I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything. "Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste." "Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself.

Comedians kind of write what comes to them. You can give yourself little assignments, but it's what inspires you. So I feel like with food, it is a passion of mine. It's where my sensibility rests. I love topics that are universal, and I love stuff that doesn't alienate people.

I knew I just loved comedy, and I think it was my parents who initially brought up the notion of me trying to do stand-up. I think I actually tried writing jokes just at home, just kind of sitting around. But it seemed like a very real way to step into the world of comedy. I felt I could do it, so why not?

I love doing comedy, I really do. It was perhaps my first love. And I think, as an actor, you're young and you do school plays and the reason you go 'I might do more of this' is because you make people laugh in a school play. You don't go and do Hamlet when you're nine and go: "I feel people were really moved out there!" You do a silly voice and everyone laughs and you go: "Ooh, that feels quite nice. I might make a life out of this!"

I'm more focused or try to be more focused on my acting and writing and comedy and let the other stuff fall where it may.

I've been writing jokes since I'm fifteen. Not out of happiness, but to go to a different place, because reality wasn't good to me.

I would be jokesmithing. I had files with tons of disses that I would try to write as I was on the train going to school.

I started by writing, with my partner Ed Simmons, a monologue for Danny Thomas, that he performed at Ciro's nightclub in Los Angeles.

Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me.