"I owe him so much. He changed my life utterly when he asked me to co-write The Young Ones with him, and he was with me on the day I met my wife... He always made me cry with laughter. Now he's just made me cry."

"There were times when Rik and I were writing together when we almost died laughing. They were some of the most carefree stupid days I ever had, and I feel privileged to have shared them with him. And now he's died for real. Without me. Selfish bastard."

"He was a force of nature. His appetite was not blunted, and his enthusiasm and his ambition were huge. He often asked me: ‘What’s my motivation for this scene?’ ‘Why am I sitting on your toilet having a shit?’ was a question he genuinely asked me, and I had to say: ‘It’s … fun? There’s nothing deeper than that, I’m sorry’."

"Rik Mayall was just pure wiry, energetic, unpredictable humour poured into the shape of a human. You couldn't not watch him."

"[A]ll those tributes to him were right, he was a constantly creative comic mind and one of the best people to come out of that era, and a real tragedy that he's lost in many ways."

"When I was a little boy, at Rashwood County Primary School near Droitwich in Worcestershire, all the little girls and boys were stood on the table and the parents came in to hear us sing Christmas carols. I was about three and a half, and I can still fucking remember this – the teacher came up and said to me before, “now Richard, don’t sing – I want all the children to sing, but not you, because you’ve got a horrible voice. So just move your mouth to look like you’re singing, but don’t sing, ok?” So in came the mums and dads, and while all the other kids were being good, I was being bad. Not technically bad, because I did what I was told and didn’t make any noise, but I was moving my mouth very stupidly and waving my bottom around, and I got big laughs – and they were good laughs as well. I thought I like this! Until the middle of the concert and in front of 40 parents, I was pulled off the table by my ear and taken into the corner of the room. I was still pulling faces and getting laughs and I wasn’t even onstage!"

"Insanity is a very high art form. If everyone was insane, I wouldn’t be here!"

"I feel proud to have turned that down. I wish I could remember what it was. Let’s say Hamlet. Yeah, I turned down Hamlet. Well who fucking wouldn’t? I mean how many gags are there in that?"

"I can be gloriously stupid, but if it helps to divert peoples attentions from the grimness of life, I’m happy."

"[Ade Edmondson]’s a good and loyal friend. I adore him. It’s like a marriage. We chose each other in ’75 and we’ve been together ever since."

"Luckily, I was spared bullying, although one kid at school, Dobson, always used to tease me about my surname. He’d say: “Look, it’s Fe-Mayall!” One time he wouldn’t stop and I thought “I’m going to have to hit him”. So I belted him and he lost his two front teeth, broke his nose and ended up in hospital. I was never picked on again after that!"

"I once walked to school in my underpants and a soggy shoe because my shoe flew off into the river when I tried kicking a ball. My brother retrieved it, but then demanded my trousers, because his were soaked."

"All poets are mad."

"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied."

"Be not solitary, be not idle."

"What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation?"

"They have cheveril consciences that will stretch."

"Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offenses...grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn ourselves."

"A good conscience is a continual feast."

"Melancholy and despair, though often, do not always concur; there is much difference: melancholy fears without a cause, this upon great occasion; melancholy is caused by fear and grief, but this torment procures them and all extremity of bitterness."

"One religion is as true as another."

"When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done."

"Isocrates adviseth Demonicus, when he came to a strange city, to worship by all means the gods of the place."

"The Devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies."

"Out of too much learning become mad."

"The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience."

"For ignorance is the mother of devotion, as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness."

"If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled."

"Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel."

"Make a virtue of necessity."

"As clear and as manifest as the nose in a man's face."

"The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill."

"England is a paradise for women and hell for horses; Italy a paradise for horses, hell for women, as the diverb goes."

"I light my candle from their torches."

"Going as if he trod upon eggs."

"Though it rain daggers with their points downward."

"Diogenes struck the father when the son swore."

"Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven."

"To these crocodile tears they will add sobs, fiery sighs, and sorrowful countenance."

"[Quoting Seneca] Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, "and these," said she, "are my jewels.""

"He is only fantastical that is not in fashion."

"Diogenes struck the father when the son swore, because he taught him no better."

"To enlarge or illustrate this power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun."

"No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread."

"Every man for himself, his own ends, the Devil for all."

"And hold one another's noses to the grindstone hard."

"And this is that Homer's golden chain, which reacheth down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator."

"Birds of a feather will gather together."

"Every schoolboy hath that famous testament of Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus at his fingers' end."

"Let me not live," saith Aretine's Antonia, "if I had not rather hear thy discourse than see a play."