Quotes from Patrick Marber

Great comedy is always sadistic.

I know it's a film and all of that, and it's a Hollywood film, but it kind of feels like this sometimes, when you're in pain and it hurts, and you're desperate. Or you are about to cross some moral line and it's so seductive and you just do... and all that.

I have made a decision that in future, I will only take on movies that have a better than 75 per cent chance of being made, and that's not easy.

I'm a happily married man and I think to get married you have to be optimistic.

When I'm on a train and see an empty pitch, it gives me a certain pleasure that I can't quite describe. It's to do with potential.

A couple of flop plays, a death in the family, and it could all collapse.

Oh, I would love to be in Don Juan's shoes for a weekend. Not that I was ever handsome enough to be a Don Juan.

If I get anything out, producing anything, no matter whether it's good or not, I allow myself a little pat on the back.

I dispute that 'Closer' is about betrayal. Betrayal is one of the elements.

I'd been to the Comedy Store, and I loved the terror of it and the way the best comedians could control the crowd. What confidence that would give you, if you could somehow survive.

I think I write serious comedies. I would love to be able to write for pure pleasure, but the undertow is always loneliness.

Theatre is how I first encountered art on any level.

I used to go with my parents and loved it, I was in school plays, and I started reading plays before I started reading novels. I'll defend it to the hilt. When theatre is good it is fabulous.

My dialogue probably reveals the paranoia of the stand-up: if you're not quick and interesting, they will be gone.

Thank God life ends—we'd never survive it. From Big Bang to weary shag, the history of the world. Our flesh is ferocious...our bodies will kill us...our bones will outlive us.

I consider myself a Jewish writer, like all my heroes: Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Woody Allen.

I have the comedian's fear of bottles flying. I've never been bottled off, but I have had things thrown at me. Bag of crisps. And there's still a part of me, when I sit in an audience, that thinks people are going to start heckling the play.

I come back to the theatre happily knowing that while it won't make me rich, it will provide me with fun.

I don't love you anymore. Goodbye.

A part of me would like to see the money go to hospitals or housing, but I have benefited so greatly from funding for the National Theatre, which has been incredible.

I don't try to be likeable. The worst thing people do is present versions of themselves to the world that aren't real.

When you're in your early 20s your love life seems to explode every 20 minutes or so. By the time you've reached your thirties, it is every five or ten years.

It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with me. I mean, I know I wrote it, and all that and invented the characters and made it up, but it's Mike's film, so doing the press and stuff, it feels a little bit inauthentic. I was just one component of it.

I love everything about you that hurts.