John Oliver

It hits you in small ways and large, doesn’t it? For instance, had you considered the fact that portraits of Trump are going to be hanging in our airports? Uh… or that the man who disparaged a Gold Star family will now be expected to comfort the families of fallen soldiers? And maybe you’ve tried to make yourself feel better, fantasizing that he might Google how much does the president get paid?, get depressed, and then resign. But that is when you remember Mike fucking Pence, who might be even worse, because he looks like he’s from the 1950s, but he thinks like he’s from the 1650s. Oh, what’s that, you say? Her pregnancy was terminated before birth? Well, clearly she’s a witch. Hold a funeral for the fetus and throw the mother in a lake.

Elections: the only excuse for a grown man to kiss a stranger’s baby and not have the cops called.

Whatever the occasion, [the Queen] has a face which demonstrably says ‘I don’t give a royal s**t.’

Florida, just because you’re shaped like some combination of a gun and a d*ck doesn’t mean you have to act that way.

It’s the 2016 election, and it’s 2015 right now. So I don’t care until we’re in the same year as the thing that I’m supposed to care about.

Payday loans are like the Lay’s Potato Chips of finance. You can’t have just one and they’re terrible for you.

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society… unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

Politics: ‘Poli’a Latin word meaning ‘many’; and “tics” meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’.

So many people try to grow up too fast, and it’s not fun! You should stay a kid as long as possible!

You just have to play every scene honestly and forget about a reaction and what the audience is going to think. I think the more seriously you take something, the more funny it might be.

I don’t care how small the game. I want to win.

Of course it scored well! It was all fags and old people!

When it comes down to the music, it’s just you and the microphone. It’s not you and the record execs.

I’ve been offered a part in Alias and I’m going to do it. I love Alias, it’s great and JJ Abrams is writing me a part especially. It’s just whether I can do it or not – it’s got to be the right time, the right project, it’s got to be fun, it’s got to be worth it and it mustn’t be bad for my career. Most people go ‘it’ll do, it’s work and it’ll make me a bit more famous’ or ‘the money’s good’ but I just think I’ve never regretted saying no. But a lot of people have regretted saying yes.

In LA, where I live, it’s all about perfectionism. Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that’s where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

[on El Chapo interview] I have a terrible regret.

I’ve got a terrible memory – I end up repeating myself quite a lot. The only thing I can remember is that I’m going to repeat myself!

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.

The whole idea of music, from the beginning of time, was for people to be happy.

I almost chopped my thumb off once. Just before I left home, I was about ten or eleven years old, and I was trying to open a bone. Can you imagine that? A bone! I was trying to get the marrow out of a bone, and I took the ax, and I went to chop it, and something slipped, and the ax went right down there and damn near cut it off