My first 'Daily Show' piece was pretending I had this terrible immigrant journey, so I went to talk to an immigration lawyer who would help out people, and I ran into him in Penn Station about three months after I'd gotten the green card. I said, 'I got my green card yesterday.' And he hugged me because he understood that level of relief.
John Oliver
I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.
I do one accent - my own. I can make it louder or quieter. That is the sum total of my vocal range. I thought I could do an American accent until I tried it in front of an American - the expression of horror is still burnt onto my retinas.
Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.
I get nostalgic for British negativity. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. When you go back to Britain, everybody is just running everything down. It's like whatever the opposite of a hug is.
My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler.
If you're asking me, would I have voted for Mitt Romney, the answer is absolutely not. Emphatically not. I cannot envision a world in which I would have voted for Mitt Romney unless I sustained a massive concussion.
I watch one news channel until my soul can't take it anymore. It's the background of my life.
I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself.
Being a Mets fan is like lending someone a lot of money and you just know that you'll never get paid back.
My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.
There are some people who watch NASCAR for the highly skilled driving - but most people watch it for the crashes.
We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.
You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.
In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face. And that's really not a good instinct with a 'Daily Show' field piece, where it's supposed to be an interview.
The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
People really have come for a dialogue when they go to a stand-up show in the U.K. They say, 'I understand that you have now finished your little comedy monologue; now I have something to say regarding what I've just heard.
The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I'll get hooked.
There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled.
Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I've ever been in. They've really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.
It's exciting to have a role in anything that's Claymation, just because you're always intrigued by what a clay wizard version of yourself would be.
As any Brit will understand, things get a little easier when you don't have to be number one any more. Really, the fall of an empire is not as bad as everyone thinks. It's like retirement. People fear retirement, but it can turn out be rather pleasant.
I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.
I would hate to meet myself at 15.
I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.
There is no greater anesthetic than sport.
We in Britain stopped evolving gastronomically with the advent of the pie. Everything beyond that seemed like a brave, frightening new world. We knew the French were up to something across the Channel, but we didn't want anything to do with it.
People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character.
It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge.
Politicians don't really bring up religion in England.
I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show', I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson.
Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life.
There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers.
The only thing I'm nervous about is talking to guests like human beings, because all of my interviews so far have been attacking people. I have a genuine concern about sitting across from an actor whose movies I obviously haven't seen.
There is so much cross-pollination between the U.S. and Britain in terms of comedians. British TV comedies work well in the U.S. American stand-ups make it big in Britain.
I feel non-stop Brit shame!
When you're dealing with serious subjects, there is a pressure to be absolutely sure that you know what you're doing.
It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.
Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.
I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people.
I can't relax. I find vacations problematic.
Sometimes it's good to remember how bad food can be, so you can enjoy the concept of flavour to the fullest.
There's never any time I think I'm a real journalist, because I don't have any of the qualifications or the intentions for that.
People are friendlier in New York than London.
I really love stand-up. I'm more than happy to do it for nothing. I've come to America to do it for nothing. It's the American Dream: Work for free.
I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician.
I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression.
Having a human conversation is not something I've had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being.
If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences.
