I remember the first time I had sex – I kept the receipt.

Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday.

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.

I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.

I’m screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I’m funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that’s appreciated by young people.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

I’m odd looking. Sometimes I think I look like a funny muppet.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.

When I was younger, I used to have more flair, I used to do more tricks, the nutmegs, the step-overs.

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on on the outside!

We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings.

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.

It’s a big compliment that so many people want to see me. For them, it’s all about football. That’s what they remember about me.

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time… I think I’ve forgotten this before.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

I’ve had a lot of ridiculous haircuts.

Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self.

I told Warren if he mentions Prop. 13 one more time, he has to do 500 push-ups.

I can’t remember what made my dad take us karting for the first time, I can’t remember really. I was into motorsport by then and I knew everything, and every driver, it was around 2009, 2008. That’s when I first properly knew about Formula One. Those were the days.

From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?

I’ve got a great sense of humor.

Go, and never darken my towels again.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It’s in the apartment somewhere.

You look like a talent scout for a cemetery.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.