Top 180 Ricky Gervais Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “I think Hollywood’s gotten more reactionary and conservative over the years, because there’s no longer art in Hollywood. Art suffers in Hollywood.”

— Ricky Gervais

152. “I think sometimes you get given a good pile of goodwill, and it’s whether you use it up in the first six months or spread it out over a career.”

— Ricky Gervais

153. “You try to make characters you care about, and I think realism helps. Even though this is a high concept, the characters have got to be real.”

— Ricky Gervais

154. “To complain about critics in a business is like a sailor complaining about the waves. Go back to the beach if you don’t like it.”

— Ricky Gervais

155. “I think what makes us human is those choices – whether to tell the truth or not.”

— Ricky Gervais

156. “People have let me down in the past. I’ve loved something, and it’s become a disgrace. I’d rather start again.”

— Ricky Gervais

157. “You can laugh at bad things without being bad people.”

— Ricky Gervais

158. “I don’t see myself as part of an acting fraternity or a comedy fraternity.”

— Ricky Gervais

159. “Everything you do is autobiographical. Yeah, I grew up in a town called Redding and I had older brothers and sisters so it’s all my memories of growing up.”

— Ricky Gervais

160. “A joke isn’t yours. It’s used and you don’t know where it’s been.”

— Ricky Gervais

161. “I think that’s the fundamental thing – you can go anywhere you like as long as you’re following a character that the audience likes and understands.”

— Ricky Gervais

162. “My greatest hero is Nelson Mandela. What a man. Incarcerated for 25 years, he was released in 1990 and he hasn’t reoffended. I think he’s going straight, which shows you prison does work.”

— Ricky Gervais

163. “You can just keep getting it worse until you have to pull back and let the audience breathe. But yeah, I really love digging.”

— Ricky Gervais

164. “I’ve got the attention span of a child.”

— Ricky Gervais

165. “Whatever else is happening, things are better in the sun.”

— Ricky Gervais

166. “You want to see the people you’ve sort of come to know and love, or love to hate, you want to see them develop in some way. And I hope people get sort of caught up in that arc.”

— Ricky Gervais

167. “I don’t miss doing things with her. I miss doing nothing with her.”

— Ricky Gervais

168. “I still see myself as a bit of a cottage industry. Being in a room creating stuff and seeing if anyone wants it, as opposed to going to work for someone.”

— Ricky Gervais

169. “I remember one review of The Office Christmas Special that compared it unfavourably to Dickens. What? You’re saying I’m not as good as the greatest storyteller ever. Boo! Boo! I think I can live with that.”

— Ricky Gervais

170. “I like my baths really deep and hot. But washing everything only takes a few minutes. So I thought it would be a waste to just flush all that water away. So there was nothing else to do but take pictures of myself trying to look as horrendous as possible. Oh my, what have I started?”

— Ricky Gervais

171. “I’ve got three friends that you’d call famous, but I’m sure after 20 years, most of my friends will be famous or work in television, because that’s the nature of what your work is. When I was working in an office, most of my friends worked in offices.”

— Ricky Gervais

172. “My physique is down to 20 years of eating cheese.”

— Ricky Gervais

173. “I think the best advice I’d say to any actor when you do comedy is play it straight.”

— Ricky Gervais

174. “I feel that a lot of British comedy is often too bombastic, too obvious, dressing up and shouting and pulling funny faces.”

— Ricky Gervais

175. “With ‘The Office’ and ‘Extras’ I’ve always snuck in a little bit of heart and pathos – and drama, which is fun.”

— Ricky Gervais

176. “You can drive 1,000 miles across America and find yourself, whereas if you drive a few miles from Slough you’re in London anyway, or you hit Wales and you’re in another country! Also, wherever you are in England it’s still raining.”

— Ricky Gervais

177. “Hollywood is responsible for some of the greatest and worst movies of all time!”

— Ricky Gervais

178. “I’ve been nominated four times, never won. And the whole world is going, ‘Why hasn’t Winslet won one?’ That’s why I’m doing it. “Schindler’s Bloody List,” “The Pianist,” Oscars coming out of their ass.”

— Ricky Gervais

179. “I never think of myself as a celebrity – or even an actor, actually. I think of myself as a writer-director.”

— Ricky Gervais

180. “Everyday life is interesting enough, whether it be in an office or being ignored on the set of something supposedly more glamorous.”

— Ricky Gervais

181. “I don’t think humans are meant to be looked at when we’re buying pants.”

— Ricky Gervais

182. “Here lies Ricky Gervais: He had a laugh then found a lump.”

— Ricky Gervais

183. “PC culture isn’t killing comedy, it’s driving it. As it always did.”

— Ricky Gervais

184. “Screw it. I’ll be in my Mansion soon.”

— Ricky Gervais