About those boys, I don't care how rough you treat them. I can't tell you how much it hurt me to do those pictures, and how ashamed I am of them. We … - Stan Laurel

We never tried to use funny clothing. Of course, there were times when we would wear odd garments for a special humorous effect, but as far as our two characters were concerned, we never tried to get very far from what was real. We always wore a stand-up collar but there wasn't anything unreal about them, especially in the twenties and early thirties. Stand-up collars were formal and slightly different, but never too obviously so. They gave us, together with our derbies, a something we felt these characters needed—a kind of phony dignity. There's nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb. [...] The derby hat to me has always seemed part of a comic's make-up for as far back as I can remember. I'm sure that's why Charlie wore one. Most of the comics we saw as boys wore them, so I guess you'd say that's one item that's strictly in the public domain.

[He can't stand to watch their old comedies on TV because] because they're so cut up. [...] I wish I could have edited them. They seem too slow nowadays. That was because we had to leave time between the gags for the audience to laugh. You don't need that spread in TV.

Something rare these days—a wit.