“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.”

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

I’ve decided the secret of parenting is benevolent neglect.I put my family last. Because if you don’t, if you put them first, they never thank you. You’ll never get a word of thanks from them.

It’s an old Aboriginal word meaning ‘Let’s get together and have fun’. They gave us the word because they had no further need for it.

Sex is the most beautiful thing that can take place between a happily married man and his secretary.

He’s very, very well-known. I’d say he’s world-famous in Melbourne.

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you may be missing the colossal joke of the century.

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 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.

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

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.

I’m funny. I’m a comedian. I’m not a clown.

I’m not a politician, I’m a comedian. I know my limitations.

I don’t defend what a comedian might say but I defend to the death his right to say it.

Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It’s fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that’s what you are intending to do. It’s that old line:

My theory about comedians is that their greatest fear is other people laughing at them. So comedy is an attempt to control and manipulate the thing they find most frightening.

I wanted to be in Jim Carrey comedy movies before I met him. I wanted to be a comedian on Stage 19, yukking it up.

There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously.

A lot of us [comedians] are drawn to the stage or show business or whatever because we didn’t feel so great about ourselves, and we didn’t know how to do anything about that, so we sought external approval.