John Oliver

Yes, it’s that special time of year where we voluntarily imbibe pumpkin spice lattes, the coffee that tastes like a candle.

[about political pundits suggesting Trump be given a chance to be president] Now, in the broadest sense, I get that impulse: hope for the best in the face of very long odds. It’s like we’re on a plane and we just found out our pilot is a wombat.

Think of our government as a body. The IRS is the anus. It’s nobody’s favorite part, but you need that thing working properly or everything goes to shit real quick.

Congress is like jazz – it’s really about the bills it’s not passing. It’s also like jazz in that most people hate it and anyone who says they don’t are lying.

[on Sarah Palin returning to Fox News] First tonight, I and the rest of America woke up this morning in the worst way imaginable.

I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley – the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, you’re in your Vegas years. You’ve squeezed yourself into a white jumpsuit, you’re wheezing your way through ‘Love Me Tender’ and you might be about to pass away bloated on the toilet. But you’re still the King.

What was the competition? Well, I remember this Puerto Rican who came out in a short skirt and a gun.

[on which film had a bigger impact on her career – “The Notebook” or “Mean Girls”] For me personally it would be The Notebook. That was something I was dying to do when I read the script. I worked with so many amazing people and people responded so well to that film, and continue to. In terms of an impact on my career, that was significant. Mean Girls speaks to a really large audience, which is the kids and they eat that stuff up. I don’t know. It’s hard to choose.

If women ran the world we wouldn’t have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days.

We lived the life with Keith Moon. It was all Spinal Tap magnified a thousand times.

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?

(On his feud with rapper Ja Rule) Right now he’s desperate. He should be talking about me, not Eminem and (Dr. Dre) and everybody else. He’ll lose, he knows that. The route that he has to take is the “I’m a mad gangsta” hardcore route, and ain’t nobody gonna believe him.

By the time you are in your 40s, what you want to wear and what you think is sexy is not always, like, for another person. It’s what makes you feel good.

Actors are an insecure breed. It’s hard to have your career depend upon other people’s opinions of what you do.

I don’t believe your soul mate has to share your politics.

I’ve gotten to a point with fashion where I just don’t care. I wear and I do what I want because I like it, because I am confident in it, because it makes me feel good. That’s the only way you can do it.

I forgot better shit than you ever thought of.

[whether he thought he was a sexy man-beast] I wouldn’t be able to say. I don’t think I’m much of one. It’s funny, it is the secret to any guy – if people find him unattractive or whatever you just get Stephenie Meyer to tell the world, to put on her Web site that this guy is now attractive and everybody changes their minds.

For a while I was like, “Oh my God, anyone that would release an album as an actor is the biggest fool ever”, but I happened to have sung all my life before I was an actor. Why are musicians allowed to become actors? No one ever gives them flack for that.

I wrote my own verses. Anything I did, I wrote myself.

If you’re an actor and you don’t get cast in stuff a lot, then put together a show or hold play-reading nights at your apartment. Make your own opportunities.