I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell's a bit more than a comedian.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: 'Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.

I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

The pursuit of joy is the purpose of life.

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.

I've been under contract since I was 18 and it's all I've ever known. To me, I'm NOT different from anyone else other than the way I make a living.

I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, an illness of the thyroid gland. Instead of surgery, I was given radiation treatment.

I have never been a different person onstage than I am off.

I think America has a bad rap right now... and hopefully Obama will change that.

The most important thing in my life, its leitmotif, has been the constant and close contacts with working people, with workers and peasants.

We're throwing money down a rat hole drain of public education! We lead the world in public education spending. We lead the world in getting the least for it.

A lost but happy dream may shed its light upon our waking hours, and the whole day may be infected with the gloom of a dreary or sorrowful one; yet of neither may we be able to recover a trace.