I'd never tried as hard with anything as I did with 'The Office,' and it was one of the things I'm proud of. I wasn't trying to be famous or a comedian, but this opportunity came along when I was 38 or 39. It came late, and I couldn't have been prouder of it.

My career, I look at it in a Darwinian framework. I'm going to do exactly what I want, and I'm going to survive, or I'm not. I'm not going to pander. I'm not going to change things. I'm not going to do focus groups. I'll live and die by the sword. I don't care. Because I couldn't live with myself.

I was David Bowie-thin up to about 28, and then I discovered food.

I'm a scientist at heart, so I know how important the truth is. However inconvenient, however unattractive, however embarrassing, however shocking, the truth is the truth, and wanting it not to be true doesn't change things.

Comedy is easy for me, but with drama, I don't know... it's still the Holy Grail.

Believe it or not, I work out regularly.

If I just cut out the food, I'd have a six-pack. I'd look like Matthew McConaughey.

Humor is to get us over terrible things.

I do the Golden Globes because they say I can say what I want. I wouldn't have that at the Oscars.

If you spend your days doing what you love, it is impossible to fail. So I go about my days trying to bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. And then everyone gets furious about it. And then I sit back and say, 'I did that!'

I love 'The Godfather' and 'Casablanca' - great stories, acted well, made well.

Your reputation is still the most important thing that you've got.

Stephen Merchant looks like a Muppet. I mean, he looks like Beaker.

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.

I don't mind what people say about me as long as it's an opinion or the truth. If someone says, 'He's the worst comedian in the world,' that's fine. If someone says, 'His face makes me want to punch the TV,' that's fine. But if they say, 'Oh, and I know for a fact he hunts squirrels,' I go: no, no, no... that's a lie.

What makes 'Derek' a different kind of sitcom - if it is even a sitcom - is its sincerity.

How many times have we seen reality celebrities fall from grace - often through no fault of their own - and then go on a show like 'Celebrity Big Brother' and say, 'I want to show the public a different side of me.' And I'm screaming at the telly going, 'This is not therapy. This is voyeurism!'

I don't know why other people are concerned about other people's lives that much.

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.

Fame is an upshot of what I do. If you're a successful comedian or actor, then you're a famous one. But it's not the driving force. It's a by-product.

We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we feel it, and we think we know it, yet we cannot say what we mean by it.

Rainer Maria Rilke was admittedly not a Dockers tagger, but a sort of European equivalent: a German poet - in many respects, a charlatan masquerading as a genius who turned out to be a genius.

War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue to life. And to deny hope in a story about such darkness is to create false art.

Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.