Quotes

Borat is based actually on a guy I met in southern Russia. I can't remember his name. He was a doctor. The moment I met him I was totally crying. He was a hysterically funny guy, albeit totally unintentionally.

I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.

I've been in a bizarre situation, where a country has declared me as its number-one enemy. It's inherently a comic situation. I mean, it's always risky when you don't go down the normal route. I wish I would've been there at the briefing that Bush got about who I am, who Borat is. It would have had to be great.

I think that, essentially, I'm a private person, and to reconcile that with being famous is a hard thing. So I've been trying to have my cake and eat it too - to have my character be famous yet still lead a normal life where I'm not trapped by fame and recognizability... I guess I've been greedy. Maybe it's time to let go.

It's wonderful that the films are successful, but every new person who sees the movie is one less person I can be 'Borat' or 'Brüno' with again, so finishing a movie means having to say goodbye. Admitting that you're never going to play the character again is like saying goodbye to a loved one. And that's hard.

[on a scene in Hugo (2011)] So I have a bath with the dog. What happens under the bubbles is our business.

It seems to me that Martin Scorsese makes films for himself. He is an artist. And he's one of the last remaining artists out there, and I think we should respect that.

I'm not going to claim that everything I've done has been for a higher purpose. Yes, some of my comedy - OK, probably half my comedy - has been absolutely juvenile... and the other half completely puerile.

Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate-speech, but they reportedly haven't because it would eject some very prominent politicians from their platform. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.