“It is no secret that souls sometimes die in a person and are replaced by others.”

I love research – that’s all the fun, especially in the field. To write, however, is to suffer, and my pieces usually come in thousands of words over the assigned length. That’s a serious flaw in my writing process – shaping and disciplining the footlockers of material one has so happily gathered.

For any artistic person who creates imaginary people, the art is like inhabiting the life and mind of a seven-year-old child with imaginary friends and imaginary events and imaginary grace and imaginary tragedy.

I should like to elbow aside the established pieties and raise my martini glass in salute to the mortal arts of pleasure.

It’s not that comedy has changed in terms of what’s funny. For me, it’s changed in that sometimes I don’t feel my finger is on the pulse.

Change isn’t always good. Sometimes changing things is a terrible mistake.

People say I’m difficult and sometimes that’s a badge of honour.

Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes.

Sometimes seeming happy can be self-destructive even when you’re sane.

Our mind is all we’ve got. Not that it won’t lead us astray sometimes, but we still have to analyze things out within ourselves.

I like my solitude, and I’m a strong-willed person; I’m a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.

Sometimes I had to room with Tony Kaye and that was awful.