As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.

I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.

I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap

My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.