John Oliver

Student debt is like HPV – if you go to college, you are most likely to get it, and it will follow you for the rest of your life.

[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.

Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends. They’re much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they’re in there.

Oh but I’m serious this time. Take your American history books, burn them in the streets, they’re worthless after Tuesday. Why? The senate is up for grabs. I repeat – the f**king senate is up for grabs!

One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.

We often read transcripts of Trump’s speeches, and it’s something that everyone should actually do once in a while. When you strip away his blindingly confident delivery and just read his words, it is staggering how incoherent he is.

There’s so many parts of your life, you know? People say that you don’t get any better after the age of about forty or something like that, as a performer. I find all that to be a misconception. I don’t feel bad about the way I present stuff. The calendar and the mirror – they’re bastards.

Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.

Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising since I just assumed he was running as a joke.

I hate cliché. And when you’re a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the ’70s, which we know all about, and the ’80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the ’90s, which was a great time for experimentation…to get to this place, I’m really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I’ve been involved with.

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.

[on the MTV movie awards] Ryan was whispering in my ear as we’re winning the award. He’s like, ‘You go that way, I’ll go this way, and we’ll meet in the middle. I was like, ‘What?!? You better not chicken out or I’ll kill you!’ It was fun.

Doing one movie every two years is about all I can handle ’cause, being the creator at ’30 Rock’, my year there starts in the middle of June and goes back around until March.

[on Brad Pitt] I don’t know… I guess…. he’s a nice person and a GOOD kisser!

Because we were raised around art and went to museums and the women I grew up around were curvy…there wasn’t this value on skinny, skinny, skinny. Curvy was clearly meant to be the winner. I go up and down a few pounds with a relative amount of kindness to myself. And I have a daughter, and I don’t want her to waste her time on all of that.

The goal is to try and make the perfect song. Which of course will never happen.

We are trying to communicate a fulfilled ideal. Does anybody remember laughter?

Student debt is like HPV – if you go to college, you are most likely to get it, and it will follow you for the rest of your life.

It’s a lot harder to do an ensemble because your energy is going in so many different places, and you have to cover everybody. You have to sort of split your attention.

[being naked in his new role in Little Ashes] In a lot of ways, I was kind of crossing lines of what I thought I was comfortable doing. I had to do all this naked stuff.

With my platform, I want to try and do good things and help people.