John Oliver

Optimism is nice if you can swing it. But you’ve got to be careful, because it can feed into the normalization of Donald Trump. And he is not normal. He’s abnormal. He’s a human What is wrong with this picture?

Calling Jeremy Corbyn the ‘British Bernie Sanders’ would be very reductive, very simplistic and probably the best way to explain him to Americans, while being wildly inaccurate. As for Corbyn and Sanders, I think we’ll have to wait and see whether being principled actually gets you anywhere. I don’t think you can doubt the tenacity of their beliefs. But can you translate that into power?

There is nothing inherently wrong with media that has a viewpoint. This show has a viewpoint; we fact-check everything we say, but I don’t pretend to be neutral on things like criminal justice reform; I’m for it. Uh… Coldplay; I’m against it. Uh… or DeWalt ladders; they’re a seamless blend of style and performance. Walking up one is like ascending to Heaven on a golden cloud. I’m not being paid to say that. I’m just a fan.

A hundred and thirteen is a lot of tests. It’s approaching the amount that you’d ask your doctor for the morning after you woke up from a one-night stand with Colin Farrell.

Oh but I’m serious this time. Take your American history books, burn them in the streets, they’re worthless after Tuesday. Why? The senate is up for grabs. I repeat – the f**king senate is up for grabs!

If we don’t get actively involved to at least mitigate Trump’s damage, things will not be OK. And yes, the sun will rise each day, but the continuing rotation of the earth should not be your baseline expectation of American society.

If I went out in killer heels and full makeup, blow dry, the whole thing – anyone dressed up like that could be intimidating to men and women, really. It’s so, look at me. Do you know what I mean? But I love women.

I’ve been scared and I’ve liked not hanging on to stuff where I know that I’m in my comfort zone.

I love hearing educated people talk and just shut everyone up. Knowledge is always the loudest voice.

(on his feuds with many of his fellow rappers) If they keep comin’ at me, I’ll just keep responding back until they don’t exist anymore. I got the time and energy to ruin what is left of their careers, if they want to do that.

For no. 1, it’s great writing, super writing. The second thing is that it’s great chemistry with all the actors. We just all got along from the very start. Very get-go, we all got along. We just – it was just like we were all meant to be there together.

Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn’t allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

If you’re wondering why I was only nominated for three of the categories tonight, it’s because I don’t swallow.

Fame for fame’s sake is a completely empty experience. Fame should be a by-product (and not necessarily a good one) of achieving something extraordinary.

I’d say I’m a bit of a fatalist but not as much as I was. I used to be like “whatever happens happens” and have that innate fatalistic outlook. But I think it’s more about what you are thinking in your own mind that is the most powerful aspect of controlling your own life.

[On struggling to be taken seriously in the industry] Even now, people want to marginalize me. They want to attribute all my success to teenagers seeing my movies. I really resent it when people say, “It’s just a genre film; it’s a teen comedy.” It takes a lot of work to make these things have heart and resonance so they’re not just empty, disposable confections. But I don’t give a damn about other people’s perceptions, because I’ll show them. For women in this business, ascendancy is always a battle. It’s scrape and claw. I just try to stick to my guns and respect myself. I want to take the ingenues aside and say, “Value yourself! It’s O.K. if you have opinions!

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head – like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you’re singing it from someone else’s angle. But it’s always from me. It’s just a new way of framing it.

I’ve deliberately tried to calm myself down because eventually I want to be a good role model to my kids.

The celebrity thing… I don’t want to sound as if I absolutely don’t want it because that’s not true. If you’re in the entertainment business, you have to be honest. There’s something alluring about it…

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