John Oliver

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.

[on Trump] He’s like the guy drowning but waving off a lifeboat saying, ‘Get out of here, I’m very buoyant. I’m the most buoyant. Everybody talks about my buoyancy. I’m a tremendous floater.’

[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.

Congress is like jazz – it’s really about the bills it’s not passing. It’s also like jazz in that most people hate it and anyone who says they don’t are lying.

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.

If we don’t get actively involved to at least mitigate Trump’s damage, things will not be OK. And yes, the sun will rise each day, but the continuing rotation of the earth should not be your baseline expectation of American society.

I can do anything I want to do really, I might as well.

I found myself a sophisticated, educated American. He’s not an actor. He’s traveled the world. He knows where Europe is, unlike a lot of Americans. He’s very cultured, but he’s all man.

I can be sent a pop song, a reggae song, a rap song or an RandB song, and people know that Nicki Minaj is gonna deliver something special every time

I don’t think I’m very much like anyone else, really. I’m sure there are aspects of other actors that I share, but I don’t see anybody else and go, “Damn, they stole my thing”. I’m me, and I like that there are people who have an appreciation for that.

I don’t think there’s any way it could have failed. We don’t know failure in this band. We didn’t know failure. We got to know it a little after awhile but at that time there was no such word.

I haven’t really decided to be an actor yet! I started doing plays when I was about 15 or 16. I only did it because my dad saw a bunch of pretty girls in a restaurant and he asked them where they came from and they said drama group. He said “Son, that is where you need to go”.

Dictionary.com defines ‘Amy Poehler’ as ‘results not found. I take that as a testament to your uniqueness.’

For my first show at ‘SNL’, I wrote a Bill Clinton sketch, and during our read-through, it wasn’t getting any laughs. This weight of embarrassment came over me, and I felt like I was sweating from my spine out. But I realized, ‘Okay, that happened, and I did not die.’ You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.

Maybe it’s because I’m English, but in terms of how people perceive us I only pick up on the negative side of it.

[On Laura Nyro] Anything she wanted, I wanted to get for her.

People will say, ‘Oh, fashion magazines are so bad, they’re giving girls a negative message’-but we’re also the fattest country in the world, so it’s not like we’re all looking at fashion magazines and not eating.

Who on Barbie D? Who on Barbie D?

I try to keep my ego at the right size. No matter what, I just do my best to live in an attitude of gratitude.

I’m not one for parties and stuff like that. I get a bit nervous around lots of people. Being invisible is what I really enjoy. That I find quite entertaining.

The woman who did the costumes tried to put me in these Waspy clothes, and it just didn’t work. I feel like ethnicity and fashion go together. So, yeah, knockers up and tight skirts. Somehow it’s better.