This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

My mum died about three years ago at the age of 101, and just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'

Filming takes a lot out of you. It really does. It's immensely demanding, and you have to put the rest of your life in the icebox until you do your final shot.

I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform.

The writing is the most important bit, and performing it is just closing the circle because I'm less likely to screw it up than anyone else.