All history, of course, is the history of wars.

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

We all act as hinges-fortuitous links between other people.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

Focus on giants - you stumble.Focus on God - Giants tumble.

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything everynight before you go to bed.

I didn't know how to grab your best material and put it together into a comedy set. I would just choose subjects and do it onstage. That's what I learned. I didn't know how to put a set together.

No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive.

I was a keen sportsman, and became school captain in soccer and cricket.

Today we slaughtered them in the airport. They are out of Saddam International Airport

Don't fear, just live right.

Being in Birmingham, I thought I was going to be a gangster or a bag-runner or a thief. I heard music and I was determined to get out of there.

I try not to talk about something unless it's something I love. But if it's something that really annoys me, I fixate on it, learn something about it and then, when I'm onstage, it comes out.

The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not.