Top 98 Quotes & Sayings by Sara Pascoe

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.

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.

Since I was really small, my mum says I wouldn't talk at breakfast because I would just read the back of the cereal packet.

If we accept ourselves as animals, and have empathy and tolerance, compassion to others, understand that humans are territorial, aggressive and have gender aspects, then we can change things.

When you're the person in the room with the microphone, you have a platform to talk about whatever you want, and it's much more interesting if we're discussing something that feels relevant.

I am very short-sighted but I don't wear my glasses as they give me a headache, so if everyone could just stand closer to me that would help.

My earliest food memory is being starving hungry after swimming. I think that's quite common with children: the second you're out of the water you want to have a Twix, a cup of tea and chips and salty stuff.

There was a girl I was best friends with at college; I always used to kiss the boys she liked. I'd like to apologise to her.

I would have been an essayist in the 18th century. Maybe I'd have had one gag in the piece, but essentially I'd be saying something.

People learn more when they're enjoying themselves.

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.

When I was 14, I auditioned for Michael Barrymore's 'My Kind Of People'.

I thought all comedy was stupid. I went to watch a friend do stand-up and I thought absolutely everyone was terrible.

Skinniness is a new fashion. It reflects an obsession with youth, a suggestion of pre-adolescence when a female's fertility can be dominated. It implies vulnerability, feebleness and fragility.

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.

But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.

I always get nervous before a gig, so I look over my writing, trying not to fantasise about all the things that could go horribly wrong.

I started comedy as a hobby, really, and it still doesn't seem like a proper job.

Many of my memories of my mum are of her in the bath with a book, utilising her limited spare time by simultaneously washing and studying. She left school with no qualifications and now has a PhD. If I seem like I am bragging about this, I am.

I get a fizzy thing in my brain, like a nice glass of wine, and I want to know facts and I want to understand.

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

The only reason you would hate to be compared to 'Fleabag' is if you were said to be 'not as good as Fleabag'.

After an afternoon of interviewing Siri it turns out there are millions of questions that it can't or won't answer: How did you get my phone number? How many Siris are there? Did you have a Christmas party? Who is playing the tiny xylophone before and after each interaction? Are you spying on us, plotting the downfall of our species?

When I was a child, I had an intense fear of going to prison. I wasn't on the run or anything - my crimes were small and they were all against fashion. But I had nightmares about accidentally killing someone, or being falsely accused.

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.

Ten years ago, I went to visit my dad in Australia. I walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over and tripped. I righted myself but my head was over the edge. No one saw it.

I wrote on my website that veganism isn't right for everyone and the first thing you have to consider is nutrition. I was saying that some use veganism as a form of eating disorder and that careful vegans replace what they cut out of their diet.

I've been an actor since I was 18. So that's my proper job. But I was not a very successful actor, if you consider being able to afford your rent successful. I did lots of old people's tours; reminiscence tours.

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

The more you learn, the more becomes possible in life.

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.'

I'm always thinking about being inclusive in my sentences.

Backstage at the Apollo isn't a fun place to be. It's a bit like a prison: small rooms filled with warm Diet Coke.

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

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

I could barely function as an adult; I slept through alarm clocks and lost train tickets mid-journey.

If you view history as a backdrop, set-dressing or fiction, then 'Pride and Prejudice' is hugely entertaining. My reread saw the misery of the female characters' reality. My new reaction was sadness and fury. Knowledge ruins everything!

The love of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy is reliant on the restrictions of Regency culture, their passion is created by repression.

Orange Is the New Black' is the womanliest TV show that has ever existed. It doesn't merely pass the Bechdel test, it gets all As and goes straight to Oxbridge, even though it's only three years old.

Regency literature was too coal-y for me, too long-winded and describey. I preferred modern books where you had to read other books explaining what the first book meant to know what happened.

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 you meet a new woman who does stand-up, it is instantly like, 'Yes! In the gang'. Because you know the logistics of the job: they travel a lot, it's lonely in dressing rooms, you know that they have bad gigs. That means they don't have to prove themselves to me.

When I was 18, I moved out of home. I decided to try to be an actor, so took myself off to slum it with nine humans and a million mice in a red Leytonstone house.

We don't live in a world where, if you commit a crime, your life's over. We as a society believe in rehabilitation. We believe in second and third chances.

I want my funeral to be uncomfortably quiet.

When I was little, I wore shoes that were too small for me for years, so my feet grew weird, so my little toenails grow and then they just fall off and then they grow again.

There's social media where people's politics are out there, they're forwarding articles and seem engaged, but it's only online. We tweet and pat ourselves on the back, thinking we have done something, said we're interested, but it needs more work.

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.

With Netflix, we accept the democracy: not every show needs to be watched by everyone. And let's face it, we don't have time to watch everything. When will I sleep? I used to read and wash my hair. If TV gets any better, I'll have to give up work.

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

Sometimes I am lucky enough to hang out with Tim Key and he is constantly funny. Every moment. When I haven't seen him for a bit I do his voice in my head to entertain myself.

I have to remind myself that I am a comic, I'm not a politician.

I don't feel like a very feminine woman sometimes. I feel manly. When I was in my twenties I would say I was a masculine girl and now I realise the whole idea of femaleness is a construct. I'm a boyish girl, who talks over people and I do a boyish job.

I wanted the audience to write stories and then read them out if they wanted to. It's always the best part of the show because people are so imaginative.

I was exceptionally opinionated as a teenager, never afraid to rant and ruin a birthday party or cinema trip.

I honestly believe true happiness lies in lowered expectations. In opening the door to let the air in.

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.

Growing older has helped me become empathetic to other people and their reasons for making choices. I used to think there was a definitive right and wrong and that only I knew what they were and so I should be dictator of the world.

I'm proud that I can do that material in a club gig where a lot of people think Page 3's a bit of fun and you're the feminist with the problem. It's always funnier to say: this is my opinion, look how we disagree.

I didn't watch TV in the 90s and early 00s. I was too busy trying to grow out a fringe and perm.