Southern people are bigger-hearted and kinder than I had any right to expect.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. And I guess I've always liked to channel some kind of personal element to that.

The British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian.

The disconnect between America and its military is shocking.

You don't really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it's just at what point you're willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I'm not sure there is a point at which you think: 'And that is finished.'

I'm British, so obviously I repress any powerful emotions of any kind in relation to anything.

A Southern accent is not a club in my bag.

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.

I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes.

Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you.

Most stand-ups, once they have done it, think of it as their default job. I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart still feels that way now. You are a stand-up first; other things come and go.

If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences.

Having a human conversation is not something I've had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being.

I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression.

The only thing I'm nervous about is talking to guests like human beings, because all of my interviews so far have been attacking people. I have a genuine concern about sitting across from an actor whose movies I obviously haven't seen.

I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician.

I really love stand-up. I'm more than happy to do it for nothing. I've come to America to do it for nothing. It's the American Dream: Work for free.

You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.

There's never any time I think I'm a real journalist, because I don't have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.

Sometimes it's good to remember how bad food can be, so you can enjoy the concept of flavour to the fullest.