For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.
I think like a lot of people, you look back on your life and say, 'Gee, why didn't I apply myself?' If I would have spent as much time studying as I did conniving, trying to do as little as possible, I probably would have got the A's.
Why should anyone think a white skin superior in evaluating the qualities of human life? I did not really admire a white skin so much myself. Did I not prefer the brown skin that came with exposure to the sun?
My theory as to why I first became a comedian is that my mother was always keenest on my younger brother, Dan. It doesn't bother me now, but it did then and the way I compensated for that was to publicise myself as myself - to tell people who I was in 100 per cent detail, going into every crevice of my life.
There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood ...in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.
Having spent half my time at university studying English literature, I know from experience that reading lists often contain more white men than Jacob Rees-Mogg's last birthday party.
I waited a long time out in the world before I gave myself permission to fail. Please don't even bother asking. Don't bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Don't bother asking God for answers about life. Most likely you're asking the wrong questions.
I ask questions, and a large part of my life has been spent asking questions of Ken Livingstone.
Steve Jobs did not start started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. He believed in making people comfortable with these machines, which is why he spent so much time thinking about how to design them a certain way, how to make them so user-friendly and interactive, and why he spent so much time studying the Zeitgeist.
As a man of colour, I've spent my life asking people to see me for who I am. With Obama in the White House, it feels like people have finally caught up to where I've been most of my life.
I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.
All I wanted to do while I was a teenager was go out and play most of the time and just enjoy life and have fun. I wasn't big into school, you know, I look back now and wish I would have spent more time studying and enjoyed it more. It's not for everyone and I didn't enjoy it that much like going to school and studying - some stuff I did but some of it I didn't. My attention span wasn't there.
My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.
Had I not played the Sicilian with Black I could have saved myself the trouble of studying for more than 20 years all the more popular lines of this opening, which comprise probably more than 25 percent of all published opening theory!