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 prefer to be in a video than to play with it.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

I didn’t have to win, and winning wasn’t important to me. Being world champion wasn’t important to me. What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

I hate to be smart.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

Brad will tell you. He puts a movie on, I’m asleep in 10 minutes. I have no patience. But the kids love action movies with comedy, Jackie Chan and all that.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

I’m sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

I’ve always wanted to do a family movie.

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‚See if you can blow this out.‘

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

I don’t like magic – but I have been known to make guys disappear.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‚Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.‘ He said, ‚Yes, but not in a row.‘

You see some of the weirdest people in Detroit casinos.

In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

The secret to humor is surprise.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

I’m a pretty funny guy, and I would love to do a comedy with a bunch of funny guys – movie-star guys, where they could help me through it.

Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the ‚perreos‘ of Plan B.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.

You have a ready wit. Tell me when it’s ready.

I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. It sounds a bit funny to say that, but it’s absolutely true.

My doctor told me I shouldn’t work out until I’m in better shape. I told him, ‚All right; don’t send me a bill until I pay you.‘

I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

I had a rat-tail when I was younger. I had this nice Bobby Brown fade, with a rat-tail that was long enough to wrap around my face. I used to chew on the end and bite it.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

As we all know, sequels can be tricky.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

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