People want me to be funny all the time. They think I'm being funny no matter what I say or do and that's not the case.

I rarely joke unless I'm in front of a camera. It's not what I am in real life. It's what I do for a living.

I painted sets before I ever performed.

I'm married to the person I fell in love with.

You know it's important to have a Jeep in Los Angeles. That front wheel drive is crucial when it starts to snow on Rodeo Drive.

I spent more time in America, but I developed a very English sense of humour. I clicked into it deeply with Peter Sellers, who is still probably my favourite comedian.

I spent a lot of time in London when I was growing up and I've always picked up accents without even really meaning to. It used to get me into trouble as a child.

In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.

Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.

I am interested in the notion that people can become so obsessed by their world that they lose sense and awareness of how they appear to other people. They're so earnest about it. But that's true of so many things.

Strangely enough, among my dad's things, I found the diary of an ancestor who was born in 1797 and became a ventriloquist in London. That was quite chilling. It described exactly how I was as a child but 150 years earlier - doing voices, pretending to be a ventriloquist.

'The Office' is an amazing show. So is 'Extras.'

In 'Waiting for Guffman,' the character I played, the Corky character, he's very serious about what he does, and it's not meant to be mean that this is a small town and these people aren't the most talented people. They're trying the best they can. So to be mean, that would be kind of horrifying in its superficiality.

It's dangerous talking about comedy; it gets to be very tedious and presumptuous.

You know when you're young, you have this unbelievable stupidity and arrogance and ignorance all mixed in?

I went to Bard College for a year. And then, even though I didn't think I should give my blood to the theater, I did go to N.Y.U., which is where I met Michael McKean.

What's interesting about Laurel and Hardy is that in most comedy teams, there's a straight man, and then there's the funny guy. And with Laurel and Hardy, they're both the funny guy.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.