Hannah Gadsby

A lot of people have told me they have mothers like my mother. I seriously doubt it.

I get anxiety and distressed from external stimuli quite easily, so if I'm in a constant state of self-protection, it's exhausting.

Shame has its place. Shame is what you do to a kid to stop them running on the road. And then you take the shame away, and immediately, they're back in the fold. You should never soak anybody in shame. It's the prolonged existence of shame that then flips out into destructive rage. We can't exist in that. It's like treacle.

I always kept my expectations in life very tame.

Self-deprecation runs right through queer culture. It was seen as a badge of honor. I started to feel like perhaps it was destructive as well.

Comedy is a man's art form. It pretty much came from a time, post-World War II really - the 1950s are not really known for the subtle expressions of feminine life.

Comedy is great in that it's accessible to someone like me, from a low socioeconomic background, struggling in life. The gatekeepers are a lot stronger in other art forms.

The thing about comedy is it gives you a platform to expose your own shortcomings, so it becomes a public display of weirdness.

I don't want to be a didactic voice. I like to ask more questions than I answer, just to get people thinking and to make it safe to access art.

Nanette' has been a journey. She went from being something of a personal little blast to the world from me, that I expected would seal me off into the margins as far as my career is concerned, and into an idiosyncratic sort of life beyond all of that.

This adoration of an artist as a lone genius is quite misled, I think, because they are very much part of their time and their community.

There are times I've been surprised by how emotional I can be on stage.