Eddie Izzard

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.

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

I don't believe that competitions are important.

If you get anything creative going, then the work and play thing is the same thing, I feel.

Well, comedy is a great weapon of attack. It's not a great weapon of support.

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

There was no religion in my life growing up. Did God invent us or did we invent God?

I'm quite good at taking in information so I voraciously inhale Wikipedia - which may have some things wrong in it, but I think is generally more information than we had before. Last tour we didn't have Wikipedia. And then Discovery Channel and History Channel. I can take it in and retain what I think are the most important facts.

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

I use a Bruce Lee technique: 'The way of no way.' He had the idea that he would learn everything, so that whoever he had to fight, he could improvise anything. The best way of starting a gig is just to not think of anything - to clear your mind, not in an empty Zen state, but more just to go on and see where you go.

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

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 wanted to be less well-known in comedy.

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

I try to keep performing as much as possible - I just like to. I used to take huge gaps off between gigs, now I just like to do stand-up gigs as much as I can.

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

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

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.

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 wanna live 'til I die, no more, no less.

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

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 felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.

They tend to come out a colour called 'Pants left in wash'

If you've never seen an elephant ski, you've never been on acid.