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I thought The Office was good, though I didn't think of it as a sitcom, just as a very good programme.
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I do think it's perfectly natural and human to want to invest belief in something. It's just a facet of who we are. What do I believe in? I believe in the obvious things. The people I'm close to and my work - it's not complicated.
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I'm actually about as famous as a fourth division footballer from the 70s.
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I was very into New Order, Joy Division, all of that when I was younger. I had a lot of bootlegs that I saved up my pocket money to buy. I had all the obscure early EPs.
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I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.
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You see the button with the picture of 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.'
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I don't know that you're able to measure your aggregate wisdom as you go through life. I can't say that I ever feel that I'm sitting on top of a growing mound of wisdom.
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Children are the most honest critics. They will say 'You're funny', but also 'You're pathetic - go away.'
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I have a very low level of recognition, which is fine by me.
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I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust; key stuff - a perilous loss.
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That's why the have the programmes presented by 45 guys; 'Hi I'm Ted, I'm Bob, I'm Ralph, I'm Dick, I'm Dale, I'm Nick, I'm Will', and they keep changing all the angles of the camera. 'I'm over here, I'm at this desk, I'm standing here' and Wendy comes up from under the desk with the financial weather.
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It turns you into two people: one of you's very nice, you'll go up to total strangers and say, 'Come in, come in, sit down, for God's sake, have something. Have my bed.' And then you'll go up to people you've known and loved all your life and say, 'Get the fuck out of my house! Go on, get out! And leave a tip!'
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I'm very drawn to Eastern Europe, so I like a Hungarian writer who wrote in French called Emil Cioran; he was always good for giving me such a stir.
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I draw hundreds and hundreds of pictures of sort of gnarly looking men, so I don't know what that tells you. People who look like... they're waiting for a sandwich that's never going to come. I don't know what's wrong with me.
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The characters can't be wittier than people are in real life. They have to be character witty.
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Stand-up came naturally to me because people in Ireland talk. But that's not talking on panel shows; it is structured fun. It reminds me of some tragic aunt clapping her hands and bouncing into a room and announcing we should all play games... and if we don't we are all a rotten spoilsport.
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It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book.
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Lots of comics try stuff out all year round, which is very sensible - I don't.
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The terror of failure can make you feel like a failure. So a bunch of people think you're not very good at your thing. How much do you invest in what they say? How much do you care? Failure is not putting yourself on the line.
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I'm not drunk onstage, although I've done that a couple of times when I was younger. It's partly just the way I talk - I talk like somebody in a rocking chair. I'm your 150-year-old grandmother.
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The truth is that I'm constitutionally incapable of doing an ordinary job.
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I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.
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In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways.
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America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.