Eddie Izzard

“I just believe in the goodwill of people, the power of people to do something positive.”

“If you go down as a comedian's comedian, that's basically meaning other comedians are hopefully feeling that you're doing okay.”

“In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.”

“I don't believe that competitions are important.”

“MAC gave me 55 lipsticks to test. These are the same lipsticks I got caught stealing by the police when I was 15. How ironic.”

“I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.”

“Religion and philosophy, philosophy and religion - they're two words which are both... different. In spelling.”

“They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.”

“Comedy is a great weapon of attack. It's not a great weapon of support.”

“Animals in the wild are lean, and I think we should be too.”

“Boy bands should be exploded from a great height. They're just pretty people singing music written by others.”

“Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!”

“I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's the thing.”

“I'd be happy to be taken as a woman - and that's what I was initially trying to do when I started throwing on dresses and stuff. But that wasn't going to happen because everyone kept calling me sir. So I thought I'd change the method and just start wearing what I wanted to wear.”

“My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.”

“I don't know what it's like in the U.S. but immigrants in the U.K. do the jobs the citizens won't do.”