Vodka! That's a child's drink, why am I drinking this stupid drink, oh and why am I on a traffic island?

That's a rather flippant quote "drinking and writing bad poetry" from me. I mean, I said it, but I was doing other stuff too. I certainly didn't manage the full stretch of four years.

You have to assume that you're talking to the most intelligent, tuned-in audience you could ever get. That's the way you're going to get the best out of people. Whether they know you or not shouldn't matter for comedy. They should get to know you pretty quickly. and they should be having a good time pretty quickly.

I actually very rarely see comedy myself, and although I admire the work of some comics, it does come from all over, so I’ll get a charge out of some fiction writers and poets.

Women are like canoes, full of soup. At first everyone is suspicious but then everyone wants one.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

When I was young, all the politicians looked like ancient Latin teachers or greengrocers. They were mumbly, stumbly men with their hair blowing in their eyes, walking into trees, opening the wrong door. They had no idea how to present themselves.