Eddie Izzard

“I did it on a wing and a prayer, and even though I didn’t have enough confidence to do the show, I had a theory; if I assume I have the confidence, I’ll tell everyone I’m doing it, and then people will come and we’ll actually do it. Once we’ve done it, I’ll have the confidence to do it again. It was some sort of weird positive-thinking confidence mantra because I had to get there.”

“I’ve learnt that you’ve got to be really non-apologetic... You’ve got to say, ‘Hi, I’m here, can I have a cup of tea? And one of those biscuits?’ If you say that, it’s fine. If you go in and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m a transvestite, I’ll be in the corner, I won’t be a problem, I’ll face away,’ everyone will go, ‘Oh-oh, problem case in the corner.’ So don’t apologise.”

“You say ‘erbs, and we say herbs… because there’s a fucking ‘h’ in it!”

“We must have been hunters and gatherers but some of us were just waiters and hopers.”

“So then there was the Greek, Socrates, he was great... He invented questioning. Before Socrates, no questioning. Everyone sort of went, ''Yeah, I suppose so.”

“If there is a God, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.”

“They’re not women’s clothes. They’re my clothes. I bought them.”

“Mr. Charles Darwin, who looked a bit like God which is interesting, wrote a book called You're a Fucking Monkey, Mate. He played around with the title for a while: We're All Fucking Monkeys; You're a Fucking Monkey, Mate; Get Out of My Face, You Fucking Monkey. And he ended up with On The Origin of Species.”

“Cake and tea or death?”

“And then earlier than that there were the crusades. The crusades were totally fucked. Richard the Lionheart, who had the heart of a lion as well as his own. He ripped it out of the lion, and the lion was left with a bicycle pump and not much to do.”

“And I think that if God did exist, he had many children. I think Jesus proves this. Jesus must be the seventh son of God. A-sus, B-sus, C-sus, D-sus, E-sus, F-sus, G-sus. That's just logic. That's just mathematical. And T-sus would always be fucking about. And P-sus does deliveries. C-sus started the Roman Empire. Cae-sus. F-sus, City in Turkey. B-sus was covered in something. Some people applauding there; other people going, "What?" ... B-sus was covered in bees.”

“Pears can just fuck off too. 'Cause they're gorgeous little beasts, but they're ripe for half an hour, and you're never there. They're like a rock or they're mush. In the supermarket, people banging in nails. "I'll just put these shelves up, mate, then you can have the pear." … So you think, "I'll take them home and they'll ripen up." But you put them in the bowl at home, and they sit there, going, "No! No! Don't ripen yet, don't ripen yet. Wait til he goes out the room! Ripen! Now now now!”

“Squirrels always eat nuts with two hands, always two hands, "arararar", and occasionally, they stop and go, oh, uh, ah, as if they're going, "Did I leave the gas on? No! I'm, no I'm a fucking squirrel!" And occasionally they go, "Fucking nuts! Fed up with them always. I long for a grapefruit.”

“You can't land on the moon and say, "Ooh, it's all sticky! It's covered in jam!”

“I am a professional transvestite, so I can run about in heels and not fall over. Cause if a woman falls over wearing heels, that’s embarrassing. But if a bloke falls over wearing heels, you have to kill yourself. It’s the end of your life.”

“You notice how they always put the fruit and veg at the entrance to the supermarket? You go in thinking 'this is a fresh shop, everything in here is FRESH! I will do well to shop here'.You never go straight to the bit with the toilet paper, loo brushes and such do you? You'd think 'this is a POO shop! Everything in here is themed on POO!”

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

“Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.”

“I like my coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong...with a spoon in them.”

“I'm covered in bees!”

“Never put a sock in a toaster.”

“This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard flight...one, from...here to there. We'll be cruising at a height of ten feet, going up to twelve and a half feet if we see anything big. And our copilot today is a flask of coffee.”

“Your eyes flashed fire into my soul. I immediately read the words of Dostoyevsky and Karl Marx, and in the words of Albert Schweitzer, I FANCY YOU!”

“Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!”

“We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag …? "No..." "Well, if you don't have a flag, then you can't have a country. Those are the rules... that I just made up!”

“But with dogs, we do have "bad dog." Bad dog exists. "Bad dog! Bad dog! Stole a biscuit, bad dog!" The dog is saying, "Who are you to judge me? You human beings who’ve had genocide, war against people of different creeds, colors, religions, and I stole a biscuit?! Is that a crime? People of the world!""Well, if you put it that way, I think you’ve got a point. Have another biscuit, sorry.”

“So in Europe, we had empires. Everyone had them - France and Spain and Britain and Turkey! The Ottoman Empire, full of furniture for some reason. And the Austro-Hungarian Empire, famous for fuck all! Yes, all they did was slowly collapse like a flan in a cupboard.”

“Have you got a flag?”

“I want to live till I die. No more, no less.”

“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I did an original sin… I poked a badger with a spoon.”

“This is not a game of Who The Fuck Are You.”

“So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel!”

“If you commit perjury I don't care. Don't give a shit. I don't think you should because you grade murder. You have murder One. Murder Two. You realize that there can be a difference in the level of murder. So there must be a difference in the level of perjury. Perjury One is when you're saying there's no Holocaust when, you know, 10 million people have died in it, and Perjury Nine, is when you said you shagged someone and you didn't.”

“We will now sing forth, hymn 405, 'Oh God, what on earth is my hairdo all about?”

“Cake or death?”

“You piss me off you Salmon... You're too expensive in restaurants.”

“I am an evil Giraffe.”

“They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.”

“What have you been reading, The Gospel according to St. Bastard?!”