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When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.

I think the reason working-class people don't write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books.

Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don't get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren't our audience - it's the critical thinkers we love.

Whining writers are a hideous sight; we should really shut up, because we are lucky if we can cobble together a living from all of this.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Quite a lot is required of writers these days in terms of, if not promoting the work, then being a representative of the work. It's a difficult thing, really.