You know, just sometimes, in between the first cigarette with coffee in the morning to that four hundredth glass of cornershop piss at 3am, you do sometimes look at yourself and think...This is fantastic. I'm in heaven.

Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!

You see the button with the guy with the tray, and you push it, and he arrives with a sandwich! And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land"

[Washington] is the political capital. It's essentially a big office.

All the shy people are doomed! Natural selection favors the loud and the aggressive

The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.

Irish people give big hellos and very little goodbyes. Unless they're female, and then they spend five hours talking in the doorway to the person that's leaving their house.