Peter Sellers

"Criticism should be done by critics, and a critic should have some training and some love of the medium he is discussing. But these days, gossip-columnist training seems to be enough qualification. I suppose an ability to stand on your feet through interminable cocktail parties and swig interminable gins in between devouring masses of fried prawns may just possibly help you to understand and appreciate what a director is getting at, but for the life of me I can't see how."

"There is no me. I do not exist … There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed."

"If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am."

"People will swim through shit if you put a few bob in it."

"To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience."

"If I can't really find a way to live with myself, I can't expect anyone else to live with me."

"I'm a classic example of all humorists — only funny when I'm working."

"Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat."

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

"I writhe when I see myself on the screen. I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, "Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?" I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working."

"[W]hile at first I felt like a new boy in his presence, I soon relaxed: he was so welcoming, cheery and easy to write with. And he was effortlessly, brilliantly funny all the [fucking] time. We’d be sitting there discussing some aspect of the plot and he’d slide into a five-minute monologue that he could easily have bestowed on a West End audience."

"He had a conspicuous individual talent, but it was interpretive, not directly creative. He could never have emulated Chaplin, Keaton or Jacques Tati and set up a whole project by himself, controlling its every detail even if the task took years. But there is no point carping. He had such a protean capacity that it would have been a miracle if he had been in full command of it."

"Peter was always a mixed-up guy, a childish fellow. But if you're fond of children, you're also fond of childish men. He was always very helpful to me. After he was famous, and when I was still in trouble with the US embassy, he wrote a letter in support of me which was magnificent. But it is true that he was very cruel to his children. He was so hurt by the way children treat you when you're their father. I have been hurt by my children. But he was not in possession of a proper brain when it came to these things."

"Peter Sellers, a showbiz baby, was carried onstage two weeks into his life by vaudevillian Dickie Henderson, who encouraged the audience to join him in singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." Little Peter instantly burst into tears and the audience erupted into laughter and applause. From Pete's perspective, this emotional scenario was played out more or less consistently until his death in 1980."