I'd stand on a coffee table, and my cousin Edith would give me dimes, and you put the dimes on your head... And when your forehead was full, show was over.

I never felt I had my 15, 16, 17 kind of years the way I maybe should have. It's a huge dent in you that it's hard to knock out and make it all smooth again.

I never stopped believing in us, and I never felt like I was wanting for anything, except for my father, and that was not going to be.

My older brother Joel became an art teacher; my brother Rip ultimately became a television producer and singer and actor himself.

What life throws at you - you just have to learn how to hit it, which is a baseball metaphor. The ball's outside, you hit to the right. You don't let them go by.

Whatever it is that's bothering me - interacting with annoying guy at a restaurant, contemplating my age, or losing friends to illness - I'll start to chip away at it. If you can poke holes in it, it's not as formidable; it's not as scary, and ultimately, it becomes another truth.

When I'm not thrilled, I get funny.

Your success is in your point of view. It's your life that you're talking about; it's your observations. That's the best lesson that I ever had.

To me, little Mike Wazowski is one of the best characters I ever got to play because he was funny. He was outrageous. He got angry. He was romantic. He was a full, well-rounded character.

I was a per diem floater in the same junior high school I went to. I sat in the office and made $42.50 a day, and whenever a teacher was absent, I'd substitute. I taught everything from English to auto shop.

Mom was so funny and loving to us kids. She was our first audience. When my dad died, I was suddenly alone in the house with her because my two older brothers were away at college. I was the man of the house, and she was the grieving woman.

I could always improvise. Some of my teachers remember me standing in front of the class with a flower on my head, talking about photosynthesis. I'd stop and say, 'Is this working for any of you?' The kids were like, 'What is he doing?'

My dad had two, sometimes three jobs. Besides running the Commodore Music Shop in Manhattan, he did jazz concerts, and he ran this great jazz label, Commodore.

When the sun shines in Britain there's no finer place on Earth.

I was asked to perform at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. But I was up a tree in Borneo filming a documentary about Alfred Russel Wallace! So it couldn't be done.

When you say 'Hello Wembley!' you're not just saying hello to a large shed. You're saying, 'Hello, I'm following all the greats that have played here before.'

I was always part of the end-of-term review at school. We would mercilessly mock any slight weakness in the teachers.

I had this plan that David Byrne was going to come through the West Country one day, think, 'Who's that guy?' and ask me to go on tour with them.

Now, with the success of musical comedy like the Mighty Boosh, Flight of the Conchords and Bo Burnham, I feel vindicated.

Some musicians are a bit humourless about their art: they lose sight of the fact that as well as exercising their muse, they're there to entertain.

Great music and great artists create their own music and look and are not manufactured.

I'm really grateful for the fact that I have full artistic control over my career. I can choose what film or TV projects I'm interested in doing.

If you become famous but haven't actually achieved anything, then your life has no real meaning - unless you're spectacularly shallow.

We live in the age of entitlement, as opposed to enlightenment.