Quote

The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.

Ricky Gervais

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Ricky Gervais
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: June 25
Actor
Comedian
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Musician
Radio Personality
Screenwriter
Stand-Up Comedian
Television Actor
Ricky Dene Gervais
Thinking
Comedy
Like
Fact
Disguised
People
Facts
Surprising
Important
Joke
Even
Empathy
Thing
Apart
Something
Surprise
Think
Jokes

More quotes by Ricky Gervais

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I think what makes us human is those choices - whether to tell the truth or not.
Ricky Gervais
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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
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I use people's real voices because I want realism. So often I mention the actors' physicality because I want it to be like a real documentary.
Ricky Gervais
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You won't burn in hell. But be nice anyway.
Ricky Gervais
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I've always dabbled. I've always nearly written a book, I've always tried painting, I've always tried to make something out of ideas, really. It was never a plan. I never thought, Right. First I'll get famous, and then I'll do a book.
Ricky Gervais
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I feel sorry for people in power. I feel sorry for the Queen, in a way, that she hasn't had a normal life. It'd difficult for me to hate anyone. Immediately someone's unpopular, I feel sorry for them.
Ricky Gervais
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Dear Religion, This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school. Yours, Science.
Ricky Gervais
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We shouldn't even need the word 'atheism'. If people didn't invent ridiculous imaginary gods, rational people wouldn't have to deny them.
Ricky Gervais
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I'm quite squeamish, really. I'm philistine and unsophisticated - not because of my great discerning palate but other reasons. Some are moral grounds, some texture.
Ricky Gervais
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Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.
Ricky Gervais
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Body language is more powerful than words.
Ricky Gervais
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I get so sick of people asking: What's your demographic? Or: Oh we've got to aim this at... No, you have to aim it at you. You do the thing you would love... make the thing you would love and be proud of. There's enough people in the world that, if you do that and do it well as a single vision, they'll go: That's my favourite thing ever!
Ricky Gervais
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People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they're very rarely the same.
Ricky Gervais
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If you walked around like David Bowie in 1973 in Reading, you'd get beaten up. The 1970s in a small town was more like the 1950s.. and that's the truth. The backdrop was probably Victorian.
Ricky Gervais
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I went to university with no money. I can't understand a society that wouldn't give a poor person the same opportunity as a rich person.
Ricky Gervais
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I'd like to thank God for making me an atheist.
Ricky Gervais
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Honor is a gift a man gives himself. You can be as good as anyone that ever lived. If you can read, you can learn everything that anyone ever learned. But you've got to want it.
Ricky Gervais
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When you get back into the editing suite in the cold light of day, the written stuff is better.
Ricky Gervais
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Pol Pot - he rounded up anybody he thought was intellectual and had them executed. And how he told someone was intellectual or not was whether they wore glasses. If they're that clever, take them off when they see him coming!
Ricky Gervais
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It breaks your heart when you throw something away, but it's what left that counts. It's like worrying about the bits of rock you have knocked off in order to make a beautiful statue. You've wasted half the rock, yeah, but it's the Venus di Milo!
Ricky Gervais