Best 40 quotes of Chris Lilley on MyQuotes

Australia has a thing where apparently it's fine for me to dress up as an Asian woman. No one has questioned that.

Fans feel they know me, so they want me to be on-the-spot funny, and it's hard to fulfil their expectations.

I didn't do very well academically; I was always in the bottom class.

I don't just want to upset people and shock people by saying something really outrageous.

I feel really qualified to write about Australia.

I find actors a little bit too self-conscious.

I find teenage girls endlessly funny.

If you over-think, it affects things too much; I work instinctively, like painting in a way. Think too much, and you ruin everything.

I get asked to do stupid things like panel shows and talk shows and things.

I get bored with the constant probing for the cliched tears of the clown, the dark side of the comic.

I have a massive guilt thing about money.

I just do what I think is funny and what's exciting to me.

I like playing all sorts of ages and genders.

I like the boundaries, the kinds of conventions of a documentary and having to work within that.

I'll probably be still playing a school girl when I'm 60.

I'm definitely attracted to the idea of people that have these big aspirations that the audience know might never happen, but they're lost in them.

I met Kim Kardashian in a nightclub once, and she was really nice. Kanye West was with her, but he didn't speak. He just looked at me.

I'm interested in youth culture - when your parents are running your life, but you think you're the big man - but I'm not trying to make a statement.

I'm not a big fan of 'Jersey Shore' and those kinds of shows where people are really playing up to the cameras.

In Australia, I'm built up as this comedy hero, which was never my intention.

I never like to think of any character as being over. I'm always thinking of different ways of bringing them back.

I really like Jeff Lewis and 'Flipping Out' and 'Interior Therapy.' I don't know why I'm obsessed with American real estate and renovation.

I started doing comedy just as myself, because I thought, "This is what's expected, you're meant to tell stories and do observations." And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that's the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.

I think my parents had a hard time dealing with me.

I think sometimes people become quite emotional about the characters as well, and that's pretty cool that you can get that emotion out of people. And I think that's more my motivation than like, "Hey I want to be the funny guy, I want to be that famous funny guy." That doesn't sit as well with me as the idea of taking people on this ride and taking them into the illusion of the characters. That's much more exciting for me.

I think surprises make TV entertaining.

It's barely OK for me to be dressed up as a black guy. But part of me kind of enjoys provoking people.

It's pretty awful being told you're a racist.

It takes me ages to write stuff.

I've done signings where elderly people will line up to get photos with me and ask me to sign things. They don't even pretend it's for their grandkids. They're like, "No, it's for me.

I was sure 'Summer Heights High' would be a cult ABC thing; I had no idea it would be such a big hit.

I was terrible student. I was capable, but I never like being told what to do, so I was always in the bottom class at school. In Australia, a lot of students study to the end of year 10, but don't go on to the final year, and I was asked to leave the school because they just thought I wasn't performing well enough. I used to sneak off to play piano, and defy the rules of the school.

I would love to play a British character one day. My accent wavers between Scottish and Irish very easily, though.

Mostly, what I watch are reality shows and documentaries.

Once I got into high school, any time I had to do a talk or a speech, I just loved being up in front of an audience, it was always a character. And then I discovered that an impersonation of the teacher was a really, really good way to get a laugh, and it would also get you good marks, because the teachers were always bored and loved to be the "teacher-parody." So that became my little trick at school, and I became known for doing that.

Religious humor is not really my area, so I probably wouldn't do anything about that, or politics or something.

To be honest, after all the crap that happened with 'Summer Heights High,' I was like, 'I'm not going to write anything controversial or edgy ever again; I just can't handle the blame.'

When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I'd constantly be that guy who'd get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.

When I wrote 'We Can Be Heroes,' I was just so excited about the concept of playing loads of characters, and a television series allows you to do that.

You feel the pressure of going to university because you need a back-up plan, which is why I enrolled.