Jim Jefferies

“Comedy comes out of everyone's worst day. No one writes a sitcom episode about everyone having a good day. It's always about someone being locked out of their house or someone being dumped or whatever.”

“What comedy does, for the most part, is it voices something so simplistically that people will agree with us, and then once you agree with something, you go, 'That's what I think.' So what you're trying to do is try to voice arguments that people get on a side with. So they can use that, maybe at a dinner party, themselves.”

“I always thought I was a good person, a decent person. I never harassed anyone or touched anyone. And you say to yourself , 'Oh, that's good enough,' but yes, I had certain jokes that I always assumed the audience would understand. This is Persona.”

“I've never sat down with the intent of trying to shock or anything like that; it just so happens that the sense of humour I enjoyed watching as a kid is the type of humour I try to emulate as an adult. It's not a decision. It might sound a bit wanky, but it's the truth.”

“If I didn't have a gig, I used to ring up all the comedy clubs across the country and go, 'If anyone drops out, I can be there.' Normally, someone would ring you up the day of. It's just perseverance, being scrappy, being a hustler. The first few years, a lot of it was under-the-table work, so that was good. I think I can say that now.”

“I had a head injury when I was living in England; I was in the hospital for three days, and they didn't even ask for my name. I spent three days in there. And then, when I was done, I just got up and left. I wasn't a British citizen; I was there on a work permit.”

“I don't believe in gun bans; that's a fallacy that people have, that they think if you believe in gun control you want to ban guns. That's not true.”

“I don't think comedy really does change people's minds; I think you can only get someone who is almost ready to change their mind. You can't change someone from one direction straight into the other, but if you get someone who is considering your view, and you make a good point, there's power in that.”

“I used to be of the opinion that it didn't matter who you voted for. The world balanced itself out and kept on truckin'. Which is true, but politics are still important.”

“I go to the fanciest restaurants in the world and try them out. I like to see these chefs that are wizards do their thing. I like two types of food: cheap fast food - In-N-Out Burger, Taco Bell, stuff like that - or expensive food. Anything in between just bothers me.”

“You can't worry too much about what you think the audience wants to hear. You just have to hope that you're a likeable enough person that what you're saying will relate to other people, so they can laugh at it as well.”

“I've actually phased out the misogynistic jokes because I used to think that everyone knew that I was joking.”

“I still like to shock, but the jokes are less sexist. It's just that, at one point in my stories, there was some sense of pride, some enthusiasm, and now I'm just embarrassed by myself.”

“I never do a whole new set of new material. I do one new joke at a time, and I wedge it in between two good jokes. Or if it's a long story, I don't do it in L.A. or New York; I do it in Kansas and Omaha, all these places I'm going this weekend.”

“I do enjoy having researchers and writers around me because I am getting a lot of different influences now from the opposite sex, different races, people of different ages, who are helping write the routines. So I am seeing things from other people's perspectives, which I never really had to do before.”

“The thing where I thought I made it was when I paid my house off. It wasn't actually a moment on stage - it was the first bit of financial security. It was the first time I looked at my house, and it was all paid off, and I thought, 'Alright. Jokes paid for this.'”

“I think the difference between America and Australia is very simple. It's 20 million people versus 350 million.”

“When I was 23, I didn't have much of an interest in politics. All of my interests were in partying and meeting girls and doing stand-up. That's all I cared about. Now, when you have a kid and stuff, you start watching the news and say, 'They shouldn't take money away from this education department.' You start having much more exact opinions.”

“I don't care if people get angry about that, believing the rubbish that vaccinations cause trouble or make the child worse or something. That's not what I believe. I think it's important for me to say.”

“A lot of my stand-up early on was stories from my childhood. And my childhood is over - there's not new childhood stories to come. They've all been mentioned.”