“Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.”

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.

New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human.

I think a lot of people think that we [comedians] are nerveless people in the theatre, that we don’t feel that kind of terror which traditionally anyone who has to do any public speaking feels. It’s worse for actors, because our livelihood depends on it.

I like people who are slightly unhygienic. A little grubbiness isn’t so bad. BO chic it should be called.

I’m an immensely shy and vulnerable woman. My husband has never seen me naked. Nor has he expressed the least desire to do so.

Everyone had a Japanese maple, although after Pearl Harbor most of these were patriotically poisoned, ringbarked and extirpated.

My mother used to say that there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet. She’s now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia

Friendship is tested in the thick years of success rather than in the thin years of struggle.

I was born with a priceless gift, the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.

Sport is a loathsome and dangerous pursuit.

The past is so reliable, so delightful and the best place to live.

I have outlived most of my more athletic contemporaries who jogged, golfed and squashed themselves into coronary occlusion.

I love Australia – I think.

Australia is an outdoor country. People only go inside to use the toilet. And that’s only a recent development.

The whole point of art, aside from the aesthetic pleasure it yields, is that it provides a bridge to the past; that seductive land where we all find certainty and consolation. Nothing quite spans this gulf with such immediacy as the art of popular song.

My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more.

If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.

We’re never going to be the ultimate-insider look. You can do 50 insider looks at this Hollywood business, and the satire didn’t intrigue me. I think others can do that.

Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame; He hides behind a magisterial air He own offences, and strips others’ bare.

satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.

The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.

I think if journalists start doing that then they won’t be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won’t be practicing satire.

Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.

Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.