I wasn't a naturally confident, extravert, outgoing person.

I did not become successful in my work through embracing or engaging in celebrity culture. I never signed away my privacy in exchange for success.

If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.

When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.

I don't like big feet. It reminds me of gammon.

If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.

The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.

I am of the very last generation who didn't have computers at school. As we grow old we'll become something of an aberration.

If someone was going to kill someone dear to you, and you could stop that person by killing them instead, would you kill them, knowing it was an effective way to save your loved one?

Chernobyl, an accident or the most successful anti-Marxist attack in recorded history?

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

In this world the inclination to do things is of more importance than the mere power.

To do the Ozzfest again would be great. I'd like to finish with a final Sabbath album. You always feel that it is still a challenge.

I have been collecting pictures of airport carpets since the early 2000s because I am fascinated by their role as the world's largest interior visual design medium.

Just stop at one of these construction sites and look and see who those workers are. They're all Hispanic ... And I bet you they're illegal.

The best rescues of all leave a family in a better place.

I'm going to be singing Dreams and Rhiannon when I'm 75 - and that's just fine with me. I just hope my chiffon doesn't get tangled in my rocking chair.