John Oliver

Last year in L.A. county 150 out of 151 incumbents ran unopposed. And come on. They could at least go through the motions of pretending there was another candidate. Just throw a robe on a pelican and tape a gavel to his wing. Or – I’ll tell you what – you’re in L.A. Just pretend you’re considering Blake Lively for the job. Movie studios do that all the time.

[on Trump lying] They are self-serving half-truths from a self-serving half-man who has somehow convinced half the country that sacrifice is the same thing as success.

Optimism is nice if you can swing it. But you’ve got to be careful, because it can feed into the normalization of Donald Trump. And he is not normal. He’s abnormal. He’s a human What is wrong with this picture?

Mothers – we owe everything to them. They gave birth to us, they nurtured us, they made us who we are. And this Mother’s Day, we have just one thing to say to all the mothers out there: Get the fuck back to work.

News is not a game show. You don’t win a car if you happen to be right.

When David Beckham got a tattoo of Jesus, the response from most soccer fans was, ‘That’s huge for Jesus. That’s a big deal for him’.

What gets me is how many women – young women – give up their power and sense of self. Thinking they’re going to get more out of life if they take off their clothes and objectify themselves, instead of functioning on the principle that they’re smart and capable, that you can be an actress and not be on the covers of T&A magazines. I’m flabbergasted by how many legitimate actresses do that. It blows my mind.

I was looking at Jane Fonda last night. And you know why she always looks great? Because there was never a point where you say, ‘Hey, remember those two years when Fonda got fat?’ It never happened. You just have to keep that baseline. That goddamn baseline.

Finding another way to do what I know I can do pretty well. A way that stimulates me. I’m always on some sort of learning curve. If I can continually be surprised then I’m alert.

You have to let people see what you wrote. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring.

My advice to kids is give it your all! Give it 110% and don’t give up!

I try to just be grateful for what I have, and not [focus on] the things that I don’t have.

It feels so great to be back on the scene.

I don’t want to be stuck in the ’70s or the ’80s. I just keep moving. That’s my intention. That’s my stimulus. Otherwise, I’d be at home doing the garden.

If people don’t like me for whatever I do, for being me, then that’s too bad. I don’t want to change to be something that I’m not for other people to like me.

Everybody was recording Laura Nyro’s songs and all of a sudden she was a very successful song-writer. And beginning to become hot. She had three songs in the top ten at one time…

When humor works, it works because it’s clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real. You don’t just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at SNL is writing to go after someone.

I have good health and I am happy to be on the road all the time.

I think we can all agree that sleeping around is a great way to meet people.

I loved Old School. I thought Old School was very different than a lot of the comedies that had come out. And that character I liked. I tried to ground him very much in reality and play him very much finding things important to him that are somewhat ridiculous.

[While Amy Poehler and I were doing press for Sisters,] every single interviewer asked, ‘Isn’t this an amazing time for women in comedy?’ People really wanted us to be openly grateful-‘Thank you so much!’-and we were like, ‘No, it’s a terrible time. If you were to really look at it, the boys are still getting more money for a lot of garbage, while the ladies are hustling and doing amazing work for less.’