“Her mother died at the age of 29, essentially turning her face to the wall and deciding to die. And so we can only imagine the agony she felt. And Eleanor Roosevelt really wanted to make her mother happier, and – and to make her live, you know, make her want to live.”

I love Scotland and I speak about it a lot, so people think I’m desperate to go back. They just take it upon themselves to say I’m going back, but I’m not. I’d rather concentrate on becoming a citizen of the world.

When you involved in an accident and someone asks “are you alright?” Yes fine thanks, I’ll just pick up my limbs and be off.

I am totally, absolutely romantic. When I broke up with a girl I would listen to the most heart-breaking music and make it worse. That’s what girls do. I think I am a girl really.

Well, the film’s not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it’s pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies.

The human race has been set up. Someone, somewhere, is playing a practical joke on us. Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex. Men need to have sex to feel loved. How do we ever get started.

The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things… after the weather.

I still do my comedy and my performance stuff and my acting so it’s not all-consuming. But I do find myself drawing more and more these days.

I think of my life as a series of moments and I’ve found that the great moments often don’t have too much to them.

I’m not going to throw away the hand of friendship to suit 100 Trotskyites in Glasgow.

I hate those earnest TV documentaries that are the world according to people with glasses who know better than you.

Behind the proscenium arch, you can’t always hear what people in the audience are saying.

Sometimes there’s a tackiness about Route 66 that out-tacks any tackiness I’ve ever seen anywhere else. And the Meramec Caverns are the pinnacle of that tack.

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce – my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions – the absurdity of the thing.

I think age is terribly overrated. You’re okay as long as you don’t grow up. By all means grow old, but don’t mature. Remain childlike, retain wonder, the ability to be flabbergasted by something.

I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place.

I don’t have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I’ve done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that’s mostly what I’m offered.