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I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.

I grew up with my parents in the kitchen discussing the audition my dad had that day or moaning about something or other in the industry, so it was unglamourised and normalised for me from a very young age.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.

My tongue is what I used instead of my fists because I was a small and cowardly young man. Amusing people with stories and being bizarre with words was my way of getting out of fixes.

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.

My mother was in vaudeville, but after she had her children, she quit working.

I'm not an abrasive person. I do speak my mind, but my goal is never to offend. I don't intentionally want to strike a chord.

I do not speak through my characters; it's not a ventriloquist act.

I've learned never to try and force words to come.