Quotes from Mike Myers

I grew up in Toronto and as long as I can remember, as long as there was cable, even those old cable boxes that were wired to the TV, there have been Bollywood movies on Toronto TV.

My father was always a straight-up funny guy. He was silly. He was my inspiration.

Comedy. It was just huge in my house. Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness, Monty Python and all those James Bond movies were highly regarded.

Shooting this one was kind of like a two month party, we would literally play music between takes, and other movies that were shooting on our lot would play hookey, come over and hang out and stuff. We had a great time.

My dad sold encyclopedias and my mom worked in a factory office.

And I thought, when I have kids, that's the sort of well told, silly, and fun fairy tale that I would want to take them to. But it was an amazing experience. And I think Shrek is a real classic, a fairy tale classic.

Europe is scooters. Europe is five young people on one bench sharing a chocolate bar. Their idea of entertainment and fun is so much different than ours, which is exactly why a movie about them would be funny.

I think that Scottish people, like Canadians, are often misunderstood and what I like about my Scottish friends and relatives is how quickly it can go from love to anger. It's a great dynamic.

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.

In fact, NASA doesn't use the F-word; instead, they call failure "early attempts at success.

While the big government culture-identity program that I've called the Next Great Nation movement of 1967–1976 was abandoned, it doesn't mean that it failed completely.

to think something is good, to do something is God.

In order to get a foothold into the London alternative comedy circuit, new acts, like ourselves, had to get booked in one of the smaller venues, usually clubs above pubs, on the outskirts of town. The crowds were small, typically about ninety people.

While Canada and America did not become one country, we became like two brothers who live in the same duplex. The Canadians have the drafty top floor; the Americans have the preferred ground floor, the fun floor, so fun that they often forget that somebody is living upstairs, us.

the strength of a democracy is not how well we agree but how well we disagree.

I'm British by heritage, American by God's grace, and Canadian by divine intervention.

Not everybody has to be a striver. Canada does a very good job of trying to raise the standard of living of all its citizens. I think this is admirable and appropriate. However, those poor, tortured Canadian souls who are driven to innovate and make things, don't just have to endure the typical loneliness of genius, they also must overcome the inertia of a culture that continually asks strivers, 'Who do you think you are?

That was one of my dad's greatest gifts, as well as one of the greatest characteristics of the English, they find things funny quickly. My dad would say, 'There is nothing so terrible that can't be laughed at.

Well, if that's me dinner, I've had it.

Every time we'd pass a cemetery, he'd say, 'That's the dead center of Toronto. People are dying to get in there, mate.

When a comedy was on in our apartment, everything was better. Somehow, even the apartment smelled better.

My dad saw hockey as almost an improvement on soccer. My British relatives would say, 'But, Eric, football is the thinking-man's game.' My dad would say, 'True. But, hockey is a fast thinking-man's game.

It's one thing to be poor. It's another thing to be poor and feel unsafe. One could say crime is the insult to the injury. But, it's really the extra injury to the injury.

Skiing was for Canadians. Tobogganing was for us immigrants.