"Austin Powers was born out of trying to celebrate my father's life. My father's favorites were mine - Peter Sellers, Monty Python, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore...My dad was a guy who loved to be silly; he had a highly prized sense of humor. When I would bring friends home to play table hockey in the basement, if my dad didn't think they were funny, he wouldn't let them in the house. 'They can't come around,' he'd say. 'They're not bloody funny!'" - Biography, June 1999 "I still believe that at any time the no-talent police will come and arrest me." "As a people, the English find male partial nudity and cross-dressing to be very funny. It's definitely a color on our palette, and I follow in that tradition." "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." "Peter Sellers, Dan Aykroyd, the whole original SNL cast. Lorne Michaels is a hero of mine. I did a project on him in grade eight. He's a Canadian hero. He's a man of impeccable taste. And Gilda Radner was a big hero of mine." - When asked 'Who are some of your comedy heroes?'