Stephen Merchant People Quotations

When I started to mention to people who know about such things, 'I'm doing this game, 'Portal 2', they got very excited, suddenly. More excited than anything I've ever done before, weirdly. Gamers are incredibly enthusiastic about the stuff they love.

I was trying for years to woo people through humour, but it seems flash cars are much easier.

I guess as you get older you sort of see the mechanics, even with the best comedians. There's admiration for people I admire, but it's not guttural laughter. It's a wry 'Oh, well done, sir.' But I sort of miss that slightly; I miss the raw joy of comedy I used to get.

There's this way pop culture has been rammed down our throats that people think that if they were just in the right place at the right time, they'd be married to Heidi Klum.

I know that this sounds grand, but I don't try to compete with other people. I like to think there's enough pie for everyone. The kind of people I'm competing with are my heroes - Woody Allen, Billy Wilder - who I know I'm going to fall short of.

You hear some people saying, 'I'm alive on stage; it's where I feel most complete...' I don't understand that at all; I find that weird and depressing. I don't dislike the audience; it's just when I'm up there, they're in the darkness. There's just a sound of laughing or not. They're not 'people,' they're this big organism.

People think all fame is the same, but being on BBC Two from time to time does not make you Warren Beatty. I honestly can't impress that upon people enough.

When I was a teenager, I met a comedian who I admired, and he was very rude to me. That's why when people come up to me I try not to be rude. I don't want to name who he is, but it really put me off watching his stuff since.

When we did 'The Office,' no one knew who we were, so it was easy to champion us; you could own us. Once you become successful, people don't have that any more, so it becomes more polarised. Some people want to champion you, and others want to slag you off. It doesn't concern me.

My heroes - people like Woody Allen - were stand-up comedians. Therefore, I always felt I should give it a go.

We didn't want to have this kind of hermetically sealed world. We want to have different people coming in and interacting each week.

If we put the real Ricky on screen, with all his neuroses, it'd be worse than (his character on The Office) David Brent. People would hate him.

I like playing a bit of golf. But, if people went around beating people to death with golf clubs, I'd say, 'Ban golf. I'll take up tennis'