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.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

There are so many memories for me in Manchester. Everywhere I go, I think, ‚I used to have boutiques here, clubs there, restaurants in that area.‘

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‚I’m a representative.‘

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.

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

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

Even with my divorce and with everything, I don’t need money.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire.

Writing bores me so.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

You can stroke people with words.

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.