Actors From England

"If what you want is a centrist candidate that's quiet on trans issues, tough on the border, distances itself from Palestinians, talks a lot about law and order, and reaches out to moderate Republicans, that candidate existed, and she just lost!"

"On the 6th May 2011 episode of The Bugle John created the phrase "fuckyoulogy", an obituary for someone recently deceased who most certainly will not be missed."

"Here's a guy who likes to take boring topics and make them interesting. If you can do that for an administrative process like the FCC on net neutrality, imagine the level of interest in issues people are even more familiar with at the state level."

"The knowing know that police reform, that abortion rights, that labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you know these things. What is important is to launch links and mockery at those who don't. The Good Facts are enough: Anybody who fails to capitulate to them is part of the Problem, is terminally uncool. No persuasion, only retweets. Eye roll, crying emoji, forward to John Oliver for sick burns."

"When John Oliver told viewers that if they opposed abortion they had to change the channel until the last minute of the program, when they would be shown “an adorable bucket of sloths,” he perfectly encapsulated the tone of these shows: one imbued with the conviction that they and their fans are intellectually and morally superior to those who espouse any of the beliefs of the political right. Two days before the election, every talking head on television was assuring us that Trump didn’t have a chance, because he lacked a “ground game.” After his victory, one had to wonder whether some part of his ground game had been conducted night after night after night on television, under flattering studio lights and with excellent production values and comedy writing."

"For years, Oliver has criticized the estate tax, which opponents, in a smart linguistic move dreamed up by Frank Luntz, long ago labeled the “death tax”; and the tax code’s raft of loopholes that benefit special interests he identified as oil companies and hedge fund managers. Oliver even briefly established the bogus Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption to draw attention to tax-exempt status granted to churches and charities. Back in July 2014, in an episode in which he lamented the "Wealth Gap in America” (which has resulted in the richest one percent of Americans controlling 20 percent of annual income), Oliver said, “At this point the rich are just running up the score…What sets America apart is that we are actively introducing policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy,” such as tax cuts and loopholes like trusts. So it’s a little surprising to discover that just months before, Oliver had a tax attorney set up two revocable trusts, one for him and one for his wife, to hide the couple’s purchase of a $9.5 million Manhattan penthouse. Then he used a tax loophole created by Donald Trump himself back in the 1970s, when the current president was merely a prominent New York real estate developer and aspiring celebrity author."

"No one takes more glee in dumping their shit on middle America than John Oliver. [...] If he delivered the exact same words sounding as if he went to school with Miley Cyrus, no one would take him seriously."

"There is no "fact-checking" of John Oliver, Beyonce or Kim Kardashian. They're entertainers, not politicians or journalists."

"Over the years, John Oliver has a history of creating energy for an overlooked issue over the course of his program, and then turning that energy into activism through a stunt at the end. He's pointed out how ridiculously corrupt the predatory lending industry is by buying 15 million dollars worth of medical debt for just 60 thousand dollars and forgiving it. He's raised awareness for net neutrality by making the petititon site "goffcyourself.com". He's written a children's book called Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo to combat Mike Pence's support for conversion therapy, which raised millions of dollars for The Trevor Project and AIDS United. That is a much more concrete difference to make than getting a bunch of liberals to show up to the "Rally to Restore Sanity.""

"My favourite album by her is The Dreaming, and I think she produced that one herself. That got a lot of criticism — but I loved it. It was overloaded with textures, and tones and all manner of things. It’s a record that I still can play to this day, and still hear new things."

"Are you really going to hand over the White House to a real estate agent? [...] I want a wig just like that one."

"It’s a family house."

"The only things I’ve ever confronted are institutions, religion, politics, but never my fellow human beings, and yet my fellow human beings find the need to defend those very things that are restricting their freedoms. God, that sounds like a speech. Should I run for president?"

"I’ve not done any of this for superstardom, quite the opposite. I threw away the rock star mantle. And for that, there’s resentment too: ‘How dare he, how dare he.’"

"I wanted them to see the gloriousness of the California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah desert. So every chance we got, we stopped the bus and just absorbed that dead heat beauty and that terrain."

"Almost killed me, nothing to be laughed at. But oddly enough it’s something that made me. Without that, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today, so thank God I almost died. The pain I had to endure of losing my memory and forgetting who I was — that’s always still in me. I never explained it until the book, and the songs — what agony that was for me. My greatest sense of achievement was conquering that."

"The class system is there to remind you that you’re just a dirty oik because you came from that side of the tracks."

"Would the king of punks be a cliché? Oh, no, vicar."

"I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs — but then I am mystified by most of my relationships."

"Punk is like looking at a mirror. I already have a mirror so I don't need the Offspring to remind me how gorgeous I am."

"If the Royal Family was going to assassinate someone, they would have gotten rid of me a long time ago."

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night!"

"Joe Strummer, God bless him, he's gone and he shall be missed. But how dare he preach class war with an organisation like that [the late '80s Rock Against The Rich movement]. Living in a huge house in Holland Park. Every photo opportunity to be seen on a bus in his leather jacket, and then he went back to a palace. You're not getting it quite right there! That's where his image mattered more to him than the reality. He was trying to con us. In a nice way and for the right reasons but once you start lying it carries on and on and on."

"England's a violent place. Too violent for me. That's why I prefer it here (the USA). For a gun-toting nation, Americans are surprisingly passive. This place suits me and the wife."

"[On the lyrics of his songs] They meant a lot to my generation. And it's nice to know you've written songs that mean something to someone rather than some trivial pop dirge. I'm not thriving off a career slagging off the Queen. I think I have something valid to say. My words are my bullets. I like to brag that somehow I got it right."

"I've never told anyone this, but I suffer from terrible stage fright. True. You can't tell though, can you? Unbelievable, the panic. I nearly die of fear before I go on stage. Something wicked. I can't eat a thing the day before a gig. It'd make me vomit. Once I come off? I could eat a scampied elephant between two buttered mattresses. But I'm kinda glad about the stage fright. I've read Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud about their terror. And I reckon it's what gets the adrenalin going."

"[Replying to the question of the presenter: "where did the name "Sex Pistols" come from, who thought this name up?"] Some animal. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. It's history."

"It's no more of that 12 bar ditty wavy hair in the breeze platform boots flap your flare nonsense. It's not a packaged image of third-rate idiots. It's not a pose. We just do our stuff. Hate it as it usually is, you know I was very shocked by the reviews of the last album. I believe none of them. They liked us for the wrong reasons, trendy reasons."

"How can you ban language, words? How're words offensive? And why should I have to tolerate YOUR interpretation? I'm the one using the word. ASK me how I'm using it, don't TELL me. And if you don't like the way I'm using it, so what? It's my right. It's my freedom of expression. Without that, we're nothing but slaves. My language, now fuck off!!!"

"Turn the other cheek too often and you get a razor through it."

"You don't write "God Save The Queen" because you hate the English race, you write a song like that because you love them; and you're fed up with them being mistreated."

"[On Sid Vicious] Yes I can take on England, but I couldn't take on one heroin addict."

"When I first heard it, I thought that's extremely challenging, the vocal — it was almost hysterical, and it was so up there, the register, but it was absolutely fascinating. And I know at the time a lot of my friends couldn't bear it, they thought it was just "too much" — but that's exactly what drew me in."

"Do I care? No I flipping well don't!"

"Paris squashed against Britney in your gaff"

"Only we has got Six Chuffing Feet"

"He's the popular high school jock. She's the geek nobody can be bothered to speak to. You'll never guess what happens next! Well...you probably will."

"I Scream! You Scream! We all ruddy well Scream!"

"Behold the E4 Udderbelly! An Edinburgh Festival venue that's a ruddy inflatable cow!"

"Chucking Spunky Tunes In Your Tellybox"

"In 1885 we invented music television. We just didn't bother telling anybody."

"Big Shiny Films in your Dinky Little Home"

"String 'em up and watch the piggies squeal!"

"I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he’d take it away. So he'll be like: 'You think this is going pretty well?' Then he'll go and send down some big disaster."

"[On his role in Maybe Baby] I was only allowed to wear a sock. But the only way to do the shot was to be naked. It's been my worst nightmare ever since the showers at school - I couldn't believe I was living it."

"I don't take off my helmet a lot of the time - that's one of the really good things about riding a bike. I can go all over the place and no one knows who I am."

"[on having children] They do make you less egotistical. I still manage to think about myself 98 per cent of the time, but at least there is a little window where others can impinge."

"I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness."

"I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give."

"[On performing with an American accent] It's as if you're playing left-handed. Or like everyone else is playing with a tennis racket and you have a salmon."