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" My family are from Liverpool, so I have some twang there - I have a Midlands accent, and I was raised about an hour north of London, so my voice is a mess. Although, to American ears, it sounds like the crisp language of a queen's butler. "

John Oliver

Language

Family

Queen

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Beast

You

" I really love stand-up. I'm more than happy to do it for nothing. I've come to America to do it for nothing. It's the American Dream: Work for free. "

" It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them. "

" You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting. "

" I would never heckle someone. That's why I think I'm so interested in someone that would. "

" Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I've ever been in. They've really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper. "

" There is no greater anesthetic than sport. "

" I get nostalgic for British negativity. There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. When you go back to Britain, everybody is just running everything down. It's like whatever the opposite of a hug is. "

" Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually. "

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Talk

Find

" If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian. "

John Oliver

Happy

" If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences. "

" I have exactly as much rhythm as you think I have. "

" I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people. "

" I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes. "

John Oliver

Jokes

Ask

" I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show,' I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson. Having a British accent definitely gave me a sonic leg up on that because there is a faux authority to the British accent in and of itself. "

John Oliver

Actor

Authority

" Here in America, people come out to see what they've known you to do. In England, it's like everyone comes out to tell you exactly how well they think you're doing. "

" Having a human conversation is not something I've had any training in either as a comedian or as, you know, a human being. "

" There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled. "

" My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American. "

" Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels. "

" I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression. "

" People are friendlier in New York than London. "

" People in Britain see Richard Quest as a kind of an offensive cartoon character. "

" Congress never loses its capacity to disappoint you. "

" Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had. "

" My first 'Daily Show' piece was pretending I had this terrible immigrant journey, so I went to talk to an immigration lawyer who would help out people, and I ran into him in Penn Station about three months after I'd gotten the green card. I said, 'I got my green card yesterday.' And he hugged me because he understood that level of relief. "

" I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it. "

John Oliver

Place

America

" I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. "

" Attending a Sarah Palin rally was simultaneously one of the strangest and most chilling events of my life. "

" You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them. "