John Oliver
People, I guess, generally come to see me do stand-up with a working knowledge of my broad sense of humor on 'The Daily Show'... I don't think anyone would mistake me as an actual anchor.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Communication
I have exactly as much rhythm as you think I have.
Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.
A Southern accent is not a club in my bag.
It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.
Americans just don't understand dry wit.
Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.
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.
I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.
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.
Most stand-ups, once they have done it, think of it as their default job. I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart still feels that way now. You are a stand-up first; other things come and go.
You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.
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.
When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.
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.
I would never heckle someone. That's why I think I'm so interested in someone that would.
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.
I watch one news channel until my soul can't take it anymore. It's the background of my life.
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.
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.
Sometimes it's good to remember how bad food can be, so you can enjoy the concept of flavour to the fullest.
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.
There is no greater anesthetic than sport.
Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.
Politics has become infused with narcissism in America.
I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. And I guess I've always liked to channel some kind of personal element to that.
I'm always interested in audience interaction. Not so much aggressive audience interaction - I'm genuinely interested in how people see things.
I've said yes to everything that Jon Stewart has asked me to do. That's been a pretty good career decision, I think.
We invented words; we'll tell you how they're supposed to sound.
I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.
There are some people who watch NASCAR for the highly skilled driving - but most people watch it for the crashes.
There are two kinds of hecklers: the destructive and constructive hecklers.
Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life.
Politicians don't really bring up religion in England.
The British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not.
The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I'll get hooked.
Southern people are bigger-hearted and kinder than I had any right to expect.
If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian.
When you've married someone who's been at war, there is nothing you can do that compares to that level of selflessness and bravery.
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.
Being a Mets fan is like lending someone a lot of money and you just know that you'll never get paid back.
People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character.
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 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.
It's a great time to be doing political satire when the world is on a knife edge.
I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse.
Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.
Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.