What have the Romans ever done for us?
When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it’s funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.
While you’re being creative, nothing is wrong. There’s no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the breakthrough.
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.
The Americans are just more enthusiastic and more likely to engage in hyperbole.
Who’s ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!
You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he’s been replaced by someone you haven’t met.
The British fans are liable to suddenly be talking to you about something that you don’t know how you got into the conversation. I think it’s something to do with the fact that they’ve been watching you for so many years sort of you telling your story.
Always start where the energy is.
Laughter destroys any divisions between people.
I get bored easily. I’ve been bored most of my life.
The Americans are so much more positive. They are much more in love with success. In Britain, they’re a fairly envious bunch, and they love it if you fail.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him enter regional distribution codes in data field 97 to facilitate regression analysis on the back end.
What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it’s what followers subsequently make of it.
Give your mind as long as possible to come up with something original.
There’s something about watching an animal that puts you in contact with where we came from and what we’re still a part of.
We need to be in the open mode when we are pondering a problem, but, once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it.
I think that the real religion is about the understanding that if we can only still our egos for a few seconds, we might have a chance of experiencing something that is divine in nature.
If you want to know who your friends are, have a major failure.
Loving your neighbour as much as yourself is practically bloody impossible? You might as well have a commandment that states,‘Thou shalt fly’.