Quotes from Stewart Lee

It's difficult to write anything at the moment, as every week there's a seismic shift in world events.

Controversy seems to be a by-product of what I do, rather like offence is the by-product of a dog urinating on the pavement. It just happens.

Now I've got kids, you wouldn't want them to suffer because of a perception of you. I try to be very careful where I do things and make sure I know why I've done them. I wouldn't want them to be stigmatized.

The me you see on stage is largely a construct, based on me at my worst, my most annoying, my most petty, and my most patronizing.

The only reason I look back is to check if I've been doing something wrong. I look at things from even three years ago and think, 'I wouldn't do that now.' Your life changes.

I suppose we are what we are, and we use the evidence to confirm what we believe.

Sometimes, I read that I'm this leftwing comic who just goes on about politics the whole time. Other times, I read that it's just surreal nonsense about crisps. It's both of those.

It's interesting to me that apparently distasteful comments from the Right against weak targets tend to draw a lot less media fire than apparently distasteful comments from the Left against hard targets. That's one of the threads that runs through the show and that people hopefully pick up on.

I read in the 'Daily Mail' that I'm one of these 'foul-mouthed comedians.' But I'm much cleaner than the people they like. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to think that a 70-year-old - particularly someone like Alan Bennett - would like it, because they've seen a lot of stuff.

There's an assumption that my audience is all these bearded twats from Dalston. But actually, quite a lot of older people go. For them, it's like pre-alternative comedy, when there was Dave Allen or Jackie Mason or someone. Also, weirdly, because I don't really swear, they're not scared off.

I'm forever reading on the Internet that I apparently cultivate this audience and never go badly.

I think Russell Brand's books should be criticised for being rubbish - but it is true that there's a professional class of opinion-former who has a financial interest in their job not being taken away.

I thought it would be a funny concept to publish a book about stand-up comedy with Faber, the poetry publisher, and to apply to stand-up the same sort of weight of annotation that you would to a classic work of literature, an epic poem. I thought that would be funny.

I wasn't the classic comedy type; I wasn't bullied or extrovert. I was more the ambitious literary one who wanted to write clever little plays.

I don't think I'd want to be a comedian today if I saw it on the telly. I wouldn't think it was a thing for weirdoes and drop-outs; I'd think it was a thing for squares who wanted to be famous.

Lots of stand-up showcases on TV are made by production companies that also represent acts as clients, so there tends to be a demonstrable bias towards a certain group of people.

I don't know where the ideas come from, and it's terrifying. They seem to be absolute flukes. When I was in my 20s, I'd walk around with a notebook all the time and make sure I wrote down anything that occurred to me. Now I'm just hoping that some sort of event will descend on me.

When I started on the London circuit in 1989, nationwide there were about 150 to 200 people that were what you could call alternative comedians - that weren't club comics. Now, last year when the Laughing Horse chain of clubs held a new acts competition, a thousand people entered. So, there are 800 people more.

Things that I do tend not to work out commercially.

Anyone in the arts has had an experience of seeing someone who they related to doing something and thinking, 'I could do that.' If you have one generation where you force its hand a bit, then the next one fills in the gaps, because it's seen an example of what can be done.

The idea of what's acceptable and what's shocking, that's where I investigate. I mean, you can't be on 'Top Gear,' where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that.

If I could travel through time, I wouldn't go back and change anything in my life, because I'm delighted with the way it's turned out.

I grew up in Solihull, on the edge of what was then the Birmingham conurbation. It was a good place to write comedy from. I didn't feel allegiance to anything. I didn't have working-class pride or upper-class superiority.

Normally, when I write a tour show, it's got a title that means something - a beginning, a middle and an end - and some kind of storyline and ideas going through it over two hours.