Comedy is a very personal thing, as you would know if you've ever told the same joke to two people and had one of them laugh their head off and the other one look at you as though you were a completely cretin.

I have deep respect for people's individual faith, but when faith gets connected to the machinery of state, or the machinery of hate, I find it very confronting.

A poll earlier this year showed that 42 per cent of Americans believe we're in the End Times.

I didn't like the nervous tension of being a public person.

You can (be a middle-aged comic) if you work very hard at it, because comedy is really hard.

If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.

Absolute faith can blind you to the consequences of the actions you allow. It can tell you it's okay to drop bombs on another country, or that it's okay to hate a group of people such as homosexuals.