Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.

The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat.

Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?

So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John Du Prez. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind.

I don't like animation. I hate animation, actually.

I liked doing live things, and with the Circus we had a live audience.

I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.