Eric Idle
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.
Life took over 4 billion years to evolve into you, and you've about 70 more years to enjoy it. Don't just pursue happiness, catch it.
A website can be very time-intensive, but I'd love to have one where people can contribute to it - like invent islands and make their own flags, and their own laws. I think that'd be kind of fun.
It's such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly.
Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.
The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat.
My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge - like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly.
I'm more surprised than anyone that 'Spamalot's done so well. You can never predict what's going to be a hit.
Americans like to think 'Python' is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.
John Cleese once told me he'd do anything for money. So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.
I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.
At least in America, you have freedom of speech, which is a good thing. It's just a question of whether you're allowed to use it on 'Fox News'.
Probably spending 12 years at boarding school - comedy became a survival gene. But I think some people are funny right off the bat, as soon as they can speak or be naughty.
I do pool exercises, like weightlifting but underwater. I walk, I swim... I'm pretty fit for an old bloke.
The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?
You look just like you!
We've discovered that the less we do, the more money we make.
No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad.
To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best.
I think the special thing about Python is that it's a writers' commune. The writers are in charge. The writers decide what the material is.
I love being an older comic now. It's like being an old soccer or an old baseball player. You're in the Hall of Fame and it's nice, but you're no longer that person in the limelight on the spot doing that thing.
I like the idea of being out there regularly with an audience and with a funny gang of people. That's what I grew up with - doing television, doing shows every week.
You initially become funny as a kid because you're looking for attention and love. Psychologists think that's all to do with mother abandonment. I think John Cleese has his depressions, and Terry Gilliam's the same. All of us together make one completely insane person.
I won't read scripts because I have a limited amount of time. Why should I help other people do lame stuff when I can just go out and put on lame stuff of my own?
I have been very blessed in my life and rewarded with good friends and good health. I am grateful and happy to be able to share this.
I love my family, my wife, my kids, my dogs, my home, my life. I am a very happy and contented man.
Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead.
I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system.
I love stage work. The thing about plays is that they're perfectible. With film, you shoot that take and maybe another. During 'Spamalot,' I rewrote Act II three times.
I never think in terms of target audience. I try to write what makes me laugh, so I'm the target audience. I guess I just hope there's another person in America like me.
I'm drawn to things that aren't particularly popular at the time. I don't know why.
It just seems to me that there's no particular reason comedy albums should be dead. There's a lot to laugh at. We have very funny people, still.
People can tell the truth much more freely when they're apparently lying.
I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.
I was thrilled to win a Tony in 2005 for 'Spamalot'.
Talent is always more interesting - ambition is not interesting. If you have talent, you have to find ways of expressing it, but you may not be a success in the world's terms.
I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.
If the studios paid the artists, how would they ever be able to afford the executives?
Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.Collection: Inspirational
I believe in the separation of church and planet.Collection: Believe
Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.Collection: Inspirational
A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurateCollection: Witty
Bear in mind the simple rule, X squared to the power of two minus five over the seven point eight three times nineteen is approximately equal to the cube root of MCC squared divided by X minus a quarter of a third percent. Keep that in mind, and you can't go very far wrong.Collection: Simple
Never do things for money. It's always the things you do for love that turn out to pay the best.Collection: Pay
Learn to trust yourself. That's very vital. ... Just stand with yourself. Remember, in his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only two paintings. I personally sold even fewer.Collection: Two
Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man; good morning, madam, I'm a psychiatristCollection: Morning
People who are interested in money are really uninteresting people. They look like Donald Trump.Collection: People
Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?Collection: Mean
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat!Collection: Nudge Nudge
I think comedy's often the little and the large, isn't it?Collection: Thinking