"I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me."

"Michael Palin decided to give up on his considerable comedy talents to make those dreadfully tedious travel shows. Have you ever tried to watch one?"

"I just think that sometimes we hang onto people or relationships long after they've ceased to be of any use to either of you. I'm always meeting new people, and my list of friends seems to change quite a bit."

"If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth."

"When Whitney Houston died, I felt great sadness. My sadness, of course, was about our collective loss - when you listened to this nightingale sing, your body would drop into a chair, your head would tilt up, a small smile would creep across your face, and inside you knew that there was a higher power somewhere: gifted, beautiful, spiritual."

"Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet."

"In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue."

"Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn."