Ricky Gervais

I was very protective of my privacy. I didn't want people to write bad things about me that weren't true, because that's just not fair. Fifty percent of everything written about me is wrong.

Where there's a will - there's a relative!

I think all art - even one as lowly as making jokes about celebrities - is there to make a connection.

I don't believe in ghosts or ESP or elves... or God. But I am spiritual in the sense that I get a lump in my throat when I listen to Vaughan Williams.

I'm a fan of the kind of political correctness that is about not promoting prejudice. But some people in America are offended by equality because when you've had privilege for so long, equality feels like oppression.

A couple of people I knew went to university apart from me, but all the way through I was the smartest kid in the school. That's luck, but I was proud of it. And I was also proud of doing well without trying. As you get older, and it took me a long time to realise it, that's a disgusting attitude, revolting.

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 think Dustin Hoffman has been in at least three of my favorite movies of all time with things like 'Tootsie,' 'Marathon Man.' Getting a bit more arthouse and darker, 'The Graduate' - incredible, barrier-breaking movie, 'The Graduate.'

With the Internet era and social media and politics being so out there with the lies, now you've got people denying things they're on camera doing, and then you've got people not really caring about the truth. You've got people supporting people who've done horrific things, but just don't want the other side to get any satisfaction.

Science is constantly proved all the time. If we take something like any fiction, any holy book, and destroyed it, in a thousand years' time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they'd all be back because all the same tests would be the same result.

I don't care whether people say, ''The Office' is rubbish, 'Extras' is worse, 'Flanimals' is a waste of time. He's not funny; he never has been. I hate him.' I don't mind that at all. In fact, not only do I expect it, I celebrate it, because I think the haters are really important.

There are no Hollywood stars speaking out for the elderly. They're forgotten, bewildered, and I don't think it's because people are cruel or don't care. It's because you don't want to think about your own mortality. I think people don't talk about it enough.