“I see dull people as projects … to be reformed”

If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven.

People who get through life dependent on other people’s possessions are always the first to lecture you on how little possessions count.

Comedy will always be central to what I do, it’s just an instinct for me, but I am a writer and always have been.

I did not vote Labour because they’ve heard of Oasis and nobody is going to vote Tory because William Hague has got a baseball cap.

And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish.

You think I look like a teletubby?

Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.

You didn’t wake up, your dreams just changed gear.

I find the fact that billionaires are quoted as if the fact that they are billionaires gives them some kind of wisdom is outrageous.

Beyond love, beyond unrequited love, perhaps even beyond any other passion known to humanity, deep, deep in the depths of the turgid, clinging, swamplike pit of despair that lies dormant within every soul, lurks JEALOUSY.

Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar. You have to hold it, you have to read it.

Yes, OK, farty is a silly word. I wish I’d never used it. I’m 34. Perhaps it was a word for my 20s.

Artists don’t create society, they reflect it

If I did things for the money, I’d have done adverts in the 1980s, when I was hot enough to be offered them, and ‘Police Academy 6,’ which I was asked to write.

I’m lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing.

I don’t know what people who I’ve never met think about me. Some have written horrible things, some have written nice things – but I’m proud of the fact I’ve remained close to everyone I’ve ever worked with.

Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God… and where can you go from there?

It makes you feel cheap and guilty when you didn’t do a thing in the world to kindle the dull burn in your veins or the sting in your eyes.

There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.

All this world’s noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!

Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.

I know that you should always say yes to adventures or you’ll lead a very dull life.

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.

There is nothing that dulls a personality so much as a negative outlook.