Quotes from Sara Pascoe

Bodies have a sex, but gender is a thing we made up, like your star sign or nationality. It doesn't really say anything about who you are. The destruction of gender binary would free everybody.

It's unfair but true: youth is attractive, curvy women are attractive, outliers who look a bit different to everybody else are attractive.

Standup is a place where, as long as it's funny enough, you can say your most embarrassing things, shameful things and disappointing things.

When I was at university, I did essays on political theatre. And it was really frustrating that the ideas weren't reaching the people they were talking about. Standup is the one place where you are talking to every level of society.

Pride and Prejudice' is set in the early 19th century. At that time, women had the legal status of children. A daughter was the property of her father until marriage, when her ownership passed to her husband.

I used to steal from the library, which is a crime and it's bad, but I just couldn't get enough books, and I also didn't like to give them back once I'd read them. I just read everything.

The Apollo seats 3,600 people: I could hear them making a huge noise for Milton Jones and Lee Mack. If the audience doesn't make the same amount of noise for you, you feel like you've failed.

It sounds like a brag but I've got a separate room in my flat just for unread books; I don't let my read books touch my unread books.

The definition of comedy is 'unsafe space' - you can't control what people laugh at.

I get too upset by online criticism.

The pancreas releases insulin to make you ready for fight or flight when you're scared. So if you don't fight or flight - if you stay onstage, telling jokes - then your body stores more fat in your tummy which makes you insulin resistant. All comedians have fat bellies, even if they exercise.

The cliche of call-centre work is that it's mainly older people who will stay on the line to talk to you. Whether through loneliness or good manners, they tend to allow you to finish your sentences, hear you out.

Worse than useless, I worry e-petitions are detrimental, with their sense of catharsis and mini-activism. Channelling away agitation, giving us the opportunity to show all our Facebook friends just exactly how great we are at being compassionate.

Culturally even, you have shows like 'Friends' or 'Sex in the City' that are imbibed along with like fairy stories, which are all about The One. Then we feel like we're looking for it, and if relationships end, what we've experienced isn't valid.

I'm a vegan and London's great for vegans.

I became a vegetarian at seven. I went on a school trip to a farm and loved the animals.

I did an open air gig in Regent's Park and that's an incredible venue because the sun sort of sets while you're on stage and you can see the audience so brightly.

I wore a padded bra every single day and night from the age of 14 until I was 31. Giving up padding was my New Year's resolution. I had known for ages that wearing a stuffed bra was a form of hiding my real body.

There's nothing you can't tell to an audience, because they're all people who've had lives. The only thing they don't want to watch is someone who's really angry or out of control.'

For all of the separateness of church and state, Christian morality has shaped Britain and its inhabitants for a very long time.

Watching the news, there seems to be an empathy failure and miscommunication.

People learn more when they're enjoying themselves.

A show that I loved as a kid was 'Maid Marian And Her Merry Men'. It was a really strong female character making fun of the boys, an inversion of gender politics. But it was very funny, too. I always wanted to be one of the village people messing about in the mud and being stinky.

When I started watching comedy there was a lot of negativity about women; a lot of comics were spewing out aggressive, violent and negative material.