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I Could Take An Umbrella And Balance It On My Chin Or On My Foot. And I Just Got Interested In That Kind Of Thing. And As I Played Games More And More And Got Stronger Physically, I Just Became More Coordinated.

-John Cleese

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I Could Take An

John Cleese

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I Could Take An Umbrella And Balance It On My Chin Or On My Foot. And I Just Got Interested In That Kind Of Thing. And As I Played Games More And More And Got Stronger Physically, I Just Became More Coordinated.

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If I Can Get You To Laugh With Me, You Like Me Better, Which Makes You More Open To My Ideas. And If I Can Persuade You To Laugh At The Particular Point I Make, By Laughing At It You Acknowledge Its Truth.

I Learned A Lot Of Things About Literature Talking To People At The Publishing Company. Did You Know That About 90 Percent Of Celebrity Autobiographies Are Ghostwritten?

We Need To Be In The Open Mode When We Are Pondering A Problem, But, Once We Come Up With A Solution, We Must Then Switch To The Closed Mode To Implement It.

I Think That The Real Religion Is About The Understanding That If We Can Only Still Our Egos For A Few Seconds, We Might Have A Chance Of Experiencing Something That Is Divine In Nature.

Other People, You Know, Put A Latex Rubber On, You Know, To Become Sexually Excited. There's So Much I Don't Understand.

My Views Are Heretical To People Who Believe In Political Correctness.

Everything In Comedy's Got To Be Exactly Right, Which Is Why Making A Comedic Film Is Kind Of A Difficult Process, Because, For Most Of The Two Years Of Shooting It And Editing It And Reshooting And All Of That, It's Not Quite Right. And It's Only When You Just At The End, You Put The Final Polish On It, It Becomes Really Funny Again.

I Don't Want To Have To Start Being Unselfish Again. The Great Thing About Being On Your Own Is You Do What You Damned Well Like.

Creativity Is Not The Possession Of Some Special Talent. It’s About The Willingness To Play.

I Don't Want To Hurt People.

That's A Lovely Experience When You Make An Audience Laugh. Then The Nerves Go Away For A Bit. And Sometimes You Do Things Then That You've Never Done Before That Are Really Funny.

Creativity Is Not A Talent. It Is A Way Of Operating.

Years Ago We Would Have Been Burned For This. Now What I Am Suggesting Is That We've Advanced.

I Can Certainly See That You Know Your Wine. Most Of The Guests Who Stay Here Wouldn't Know The Difference Between Bordeaux And Claret.

The Americans Are Just More Enthusiastic And More Likely To Engage In Hyperbole.

Once We've Made A Decision, We Are Efficient Only If We Go Through With It Decisively, Undistracted By Doubts About Its Correctness.

Life Is A Terminal Disease, And It Is Sexually Transmitted.

The British Fans Are Liable To Suddenly Be Talking To You About Something That You Don't Know How You Got Into The Conversation. I Think It's Something To Do With The Fact That They've Been Watching You For So Many Years Sort Of You Telling Your Story.

Your Mother Was A Hamster And You Father Smelled Of Elder Berries.

You Can Lead A Horse To Water But You Can't Make Him Enter Regional Distribution Codes In Data Field 97 To Facilitate Regression Analysis On The Back End.

I Was Always A Sports Nut But I've Lost Interest Now In Whether One Bunch Of Mercenaries In North London Is Going To Beat Another Bunch Of Mercenaries From West London.

When You've Only Got Few Days Of Rehearsal Before You're In The Studio, It's Wonderful To Start Off With People That You Have Good, Friendly, Tolerable Relationships To Start With, For The Simple Reason That You Don't Have To Spend 24 Hours Figuring Out How Sensitive They Are, And Can You Give Them A Line Reading, Or How Do You Have To Give Them Direction.

Michael Palin Decided To Give Up On His Considerable Comedy Talents To Make Those Dreadfully Tedious Travel Shows. Have You Ever Tried To Watch One?

The Americans All Love 'the Holy Grail', And The English All Love 'life Of Brian', And I'm Afraid On This One, I Side With The English.

If Life Were Fair, Dan Quayle Would Be Making A Living Asking 'do You Want Fries With That?'

A Man Will Give Up Almost Anything Except His Suffering.

It's Too Difficult To Start Right From Scratch And Try And Be Funny Out Of The Blue.

Filming Is Like A Long Air Journey: There's So Much Hanging Around And Boredom That They Keep Giving You Food.

The English Contribution To World Cuisine: The Chip.

I Was Very Sad To Hear Of The Death Of Ronnie Barker, Who Was Such A Warm, Friendly And Encouraging Presence To Have When I Started In Television. He Was Also A Great Comic Actor To Learn From.

There's Something About Watching An Animal That Puts You In Contact With Where We Came From And What We're Still A Part Of.

Political Correctness Is A Bit Like A Granny, A Maiden Aunt Arriving At A Party When Everyone's Having A Good Time. And She Comes In, They All Start Sort Of Buttoning Up And Becoming Self-conscious And Behaving Properly And Then When She Leaves, You Can Have Fun Again.

If I Like Chocolate It Won't Surprise You That I Have A Few Chocolates In My Fridge, But If You Find Out I've Got 16 Warehouses Full Of Chocolate, You'd Think I Was Insane. All These Rich Guys Are Insane, Obsessive Compulsive Twits Obsessed With Money - Money Is All They Think About - They're All Nuts.

I Think You Can Write Very Good Comedy Without A Partner, But What I Love About It, Working With A Partner, Is That You Get To Places You'd Never Get On Your Own. It's Like When God Was Designing The World And Decided We Couldn't Have Children Without A Partner; It Was A Way Of Mixing Up The Genes So You'd Get A More Interesting Product.

When The Target Audience Is American Teenage Kids, You Can Have Problems. My Generation Prized Really Fine Acting And Writing. Sometimes You Have To Go Back To The Basic Principles Which Underpin Great Visual Comedy.

Although I Had Good Hand-eye Coordination, I Was So Tall And Skinny And Muscularly Weak That I Just Was Not Well Coordinated. But What I Started To Do Quite Early On Was Watch Some Of The Great Old Silent Comedians, Like Laurel And Hardy And Chaplin, And Then Later On Harold Lloyd And Buster Keaton.

Writing Is The Great Skill, The Creative Skill. The Acting Is More An Interpretative Skill. And The Thrill For Me Is The Moment When I Think Of Something. And Then The Challenge Is How To Get That Funny Idea To Work In Terms Of The Structure And That Kind Of Thing, Which Is - And That's What I Really Love Doing.

It's Not The Despair, Laura. I Can Take The Despair. It's The Hope I Can't Stand.

Some Actors, I Think, Want To Feel That They Are As Creative As The Writer. And The Answer Is, Frankly, They're Not.

The Writing Is The Most Important Bit, And Performing It Is Just Closing The Circle Because I'm Less Likely To Screw It Up Than Anyone Else.

When I Was In School, I Was Beaten Every 30 Minutes. It Never Did Me Any Harm Except For Some Psychological Mal-adjustments And Blurred Vision.

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Sense Of Humor Is So Much More Subjective Than Anyone Believes.

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What Is Absurd Is Not The Teachings Of The Founders Of Religion, It's What Followers Subsequently Make Of It.

You Don't Have To Be The Dalai Lama To Tell People That Life's About Change.

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Too Many People Confuse Being Serious With Being Solemn.

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Either People Walk Round Dressed As Chickens Or They Listen To Beethoven.

Laughter Is A Force For Democracy.

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Who's Ever Going To Write A Film In Which I Get The Girl? Me!

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I'm Not Sure What's Going On In Britain. I Don't Know What's Going On In London. Because London Is No Longer An English City, And That's How They Got The Olympics. I Mean, They Said, "we're The Most Cosmopolitan City On Earth," But It Doesn't Feel English.

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The Open Mode Is A Mood In Which Curiosity For Its Own Sake Can Operate, Because We're Not Under Pressure To Get A Specific Thing Done Properly. We Can Play.

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I Want To Write A Book Which Is The History Of Comedy.

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I Could Take An Umbrella And Balance It On My Chin Or On My Foot. And I Just Got Interested In That Kind Of Thing. And As I Played Games More And More And Got Stronger Physically, I Just Became More Coordinated.

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Aping Urbanity, Oozing With Vanity, Plump As A Manatee, Faking Humanity, Intellectual Inanity, Journalistic Calamity, Fox Noise Insanity, You're A Profanity, Hannity.

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When You Do Comedy In Front Of An Audience, They Are The Ones Who Tell You Whether It's Funny Or Not And Which Bits Are Funny And Which Bits Need To Be Fixed.

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By Watching The Great, Old Comedians I Picked Up A Few Tricks About How To Do Physical Comedy. And Whenever I Could Learn Something, I Sort Of Added That To My Repertoire.

Laughter Is The Best Creative Medicine.

When We Hold A World Championship For A Particular Sport, We Invite Teams From Other Countries To Play As Well.

If God Did Not Intend For Us To Eat Animals, Then Why Did He Make Them Out Of Meat?

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I Can Do Anything I Want, I'm Eccentric!

I Can Never Do Better Than 'fawlty Towers,' Whatever I Do. Now I Very Much Want To Teach Young Talent Some Rules Of The Game.

All Humour Is Critical, You Know? You Make Stupid Jokes. I Mean, Stupidity Is An Infirmity, Isn't It?

I Have A Tendency Sometimes To Get Too Logical With What I'm Writing, Just Because I Want It To Be Kind Of Perfect.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

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The Sad Thing About True Stupidity Is That You Can Do Absolutely Nothing About It.

Absolutely Nothing

I Find The Alexander Technique Very Helpful In My Work. Things Happen Without You Trying. They Get To Be Light And Relaxed. You Must Get An Alexander Teacher To Show It To You.

We Don't Know Where We Get Our Ideas From. What We Do Know Is That We Do Not Get Them From Our Laptops.

Laughter Destroys Any Divisions Between People.

Don't Let Anyone Tell You What You Ought To Like.

I Have Several Times Made A Poor Choice By Avoiding A Necessary Confrontation.

Most Of The Bad Taste I've Been Accused Of Has Been Generic Bad Taste; It's Been Making Fun Of An Idea As Opposed To A Person.

As Daniel Levitin Writes, Our Brain Is A "giant Pattern Detector." If We Read Something That Coincides With What We Already Believe We're More Likely To Give It Credence, While The Opposite Is Not True.

I'm Very Odd 'cause I Think There's More Than Just A Materialist Planet, A Materialist, Reductionist Planet.

I Would Like To Do My Own Eulogy, And Then Shoot Myself And Then Get In The Coffin.

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You Go In And Meet The Head Of Bbc One And Get An Assurance About Not Dumbing Down. And Then, Of Course A Few Months Later, He's Been Replaced By Someone You Haven't Met.

I Think Humor Is Incredibly Positive, I Think It Is Life Advancing. There's Medical Research To Show That It Improves Your Antibodies. It's All About Sense And Perspective.

I Tend To Have An Odd Split In My Mind: I Tend To Look At It As A Writer And When The Writing Thing Is Ok And I'm Happy With It, Then I Put On My Actor's Hat.

High Creativity Is Responding To Situations Without Critical Thought.

Comedy Always Works Best When It Is Mean-spirited.

When People Quote Sketches To Me, Half The Time I Don't Know What They're Talking About So I Have To Sort Of Go, Aha, Yes, Oh Yep, I Remember That And Lie My Way Out Of It.

Naturally, People's Image Is Of A Performer, But The Reality Of It Is The Writing For Me Has Always Been The Most Important Thing And The Most Rewarding Thing.

I'm Always Meeting New People, And My List Of Friends Seems To Change Quite A Bit.

The Americans Are So Much More Positive. They Are Much More In Love With Success. In Britain, They're A Fairly Envious Bunch, And They Love It If You Fail.

I Think That Money Spoils Most Things, Once It Becomes The Primary Motivating Force.

What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

Rhetorical Question

British Press Think Entirely In Clichés, And When They Do Come Across Creative Work, They Think That It Must Be Based On Something, Because They Don't Realize That You Can Create Things That Aren't Based On Things.

A Lot Of Humour Is About Just Enjoying Life And Spontaneity And Because You Make A Joke That Puts Somebody Down - We're Always Teasing Each Other. It's With Affection. It's Nasty Teasing That We - Not All Teasing; Nasty Teasing You Cut Out.

I Think It Takes A Long Time, As You Get Older, To Realize Just How Crazy The World Is, Just How Ridiculous It All Is.

If You Want Creative Workers, Give Them Enough Time To Play.

The Real Religion Is About The Understanding That If We Can Only Still Our Egos For A Few Seconds, We Might Have A Chance Of Experiencing Something That Is Divine In Nature. But In Order To Do That, We Have To Slice Away At Our Egos And Try To Get Them Down To A Manageable Size, And Then Still Work Some Practiced Light Meditation. So Real Religion Is About Reducing Our Egos, Whereas All The Churches Are Interested In Is Egotistical Activities, Like Getting As Many Members And Raising As Much Money And Becoming As Important And High-profile And Influential As Possible.

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I Think The Problem With People Like This Is That They Are So Stupid That They Have No Idea How Stupid They Are.

Wine Is Wonderful Stuff. But So Many People Are Put Off By The Snobbery Of It.

While You're Being Creative, Nothing Is Wrong. There's No Such Thing As A Mistake, And Any Drivel May Lead To The Breakthrough.

It’s Only On The Brink That People Find The Will To Change. Only At The Precipice Do We Evolve.

I Think It's Because In America You Always Get The Sense That If You Fail, You Can Just Pack Up Your Things And Go Somewhere Else And Try Again. But In England, It's So Geographically Small That If Somebody Succeeds Here, It Reduces Your Chances Of Succeeding.

I Wish You Wusses Would Stop Whining About Your Unhappiness. I'm Really Fed Up With It. Pour Yourself A Scotch And Pull Yourself Together. Go Out And Shoot Something!

I Find It Rather Easy To Portray A Businessman. Being Bland, Rather Cruel And Incompetent Comes Naturally To Me.

Why Write About The Past? Well, There's More Of It.

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I've Always Found Life Quite Difficult To Explain To People Or To Myself.

The Thrill I Got Discovering Buster Keaton When I Was Growing Up Was So Exciting. He Was One Of The Greats.

If I Can Get You To Laugh With Me, You Like Me Better, Which Makes You Open To My Ideas

Students Who Laugh More- Learn More. Students Who Laugh More Earn More.

Nothing Will Stop You Being Creative More Effectively As The Fear Of Making A Mistake.

My Compulsion To Always Be Working Has Become Less Strong And My Current Business Is Purely Down To This Enormous Alimony. If I Wasn't Doing This I'd Be Making Documentaries About Wildlife And Other Subjects That Interest Me.

The Great Thing About Florida Is You - Each City's About Two Hours' Drive From Everywhere Else.

We All Die At The End, But Does That Nullify Everything? Would Most People Rather Say, "i Wish I Hadn't Been Born?" Once You're Born You'll Have To Die, Now Is That Funny Or Sad?

No Hope For Planet At All. But I Will Be Gone Before The Planet Is Gone, So It's Your Problem.

You Have To Create Boundaries Of Space And Then You Have To Create Boundaries Of Time.

To Be Creative You Must Create A Space For Yourself Where You Can Be Undisturbed... Separate From Everyday Concerns.

It's A Plastic Surgeon You Need, Not A Doctor

You Can't Make Christ Funny. He's Self-aware, He's Too Flexible Within The Situation. It's Rigidity, It's When The Ego Takes Over And The Behavior Becomes Inappropriate That It Becomes Funny.

God Was Treated Like This Powerful, Erratic, Rather Punitive Father Who Has To Be Pacified And Praised. You Know, Flattered.

Telling People How To Be Creative Is Easy - Being Creative Is Difficult.

What's The Bleedin' Point?

My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels.

It's Easier To Be Creative If You've Got Other People To Play With.

I Don't Understand Why Very, Very Rich People Want To Have Even More Money Than They've Already Got.

I Think That I Feel An Indignation When I Don't Understand Something.

I Started To Make Harder Jokes Before Anyone Else Did. And The Producers Would Get Anxious. They'd Say, 'that's A Little Bit Hard-edged, Isn't It?' And I'd Say, 'let's Just Try It And See How The Audience Reacts. If They Don't Like It, Let's Cut It Out.' And The Audience Roared With Laughter, So I Learned You Could Do This Harder Humor And People Loved It.

A Satisfied Customer. We Should Have Him Stuffed.

I Used To Desire Many, Many Things, But Now I Have Just One Desire, And That's To Get Rid Of All My Other Desires.

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When I Was A Child And I Was Upset About Something, My Mother Was Not Capable Of Containing That Emotion, Of Letting Me Be Upset But Reassuring Me, Of Just Being With Me In A Calming Way. She Always Got In A Flap, So I Not Only Had My Own Baby Panics, Fears And Terrors To Deal With, But I Had To Cope With Hers, Too. Eventually I Taught Myself To Remain Calm When I Was Panicked, In Order Not To Upset Her. In A Way, She Had Managed To Put Me In Charge Of Her. At 18 Months Old, I Was Doing The Parenting.

The Trouble With The British Is That They Are Not Interested In Ideas. If Jesus Came Back Today And Offered To Speak For An Hour On British Television, They Would Say, "what! Another Talking Head?

Would You Take A Billion Dollars, If As Part Of The Deal The Earth Were Made Uninhabitable A Year After Your Death? ... Well, Of Course Not; You Care About Your Friends, Above All Your Children, Any Grandchildren. But ... What If The Deal Calls For The Planet To Be Poisoned A Thousand Years Later? We Feel Strong Obligations To Generations In The Near Future - Should We Not Feel The Same Way About Our Children's Great-grandchildren And Generations Beyond Them?

Now Most People Do Not Want An Ordinary Life In Which They Do A Job Well, Earn The Respect Of Their Collaborators And Competitors, Bring Up A Family And Have Friends. That's Not Enough Any More, And I Think That Is Absolutely Tragic - And I'm Not Exaggerating - That People Feel Like A Decent, Ordinary, Fun Life Is No Longer Enough.

English Television From The Fifties To The Nineties Was The Least Bad In The World, And Now It's Just As Bad As It Is Anywhere.

Bad In The World

The One Thing I Remember About Christmas Was That My Father Used To Take Me Out In A Boat About Ten Miles Offshore On Christmas Day, And I Used To Have To Swim Back. Extraordinary. It Was A Ritual. Mind You, That Wasn't The Hard Part. The Difficult Bit Was Getting Out Of The Sack.

All Right, But Apart From The Sanitation, Medicine, Education, Wine, Public Order, Irrigation, Roads, The Fresh Water System And Public Health, What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

Come To Me. I Want To Plow You Like A Calgary Driveway At Christmas.

The World Is Insane. With Tiny Spots Of Sanity, Here And There... Not The Other Way Around!

If You Want To Know Who Your Friends Are, Have A Major Failure.

Who Your Friends Are

On Movies, I Like To Involve The Cast In The Writing Of The Script. I Like To Have A Rehearsal Period, After Which I Do The Last Draft, Which Gives Me A Chance To Incorporate Anything The Actors Have Come Up With During The Rehearsal Period, So I'm Very Inclusive As A Writer.

Bureaucrats Shouldn't Be In Charge Of Comedy.

The Main Evolutionary Significance Of Humor Is That It Gets Us From The Closed Mode To The Open Mode Quicker Than Anything Else.

When You've Been Doing Comedy For Forty Years, You Really Do Know Most Of The Jokes. And Even If You Don't Know A Specific Joke, You Can Pretty Much Guess What It's Going To Be.

I Was A Terrible Dancer. I Dance Like An Englishman.

If You Really Don't Know Where To Start Or If You're Stuck, Start Generating Random Connections And Allow Your Intuition To Tell You If One Might Lead Somewhere Interesting.

In Britain, Girls Seem To Be Either Bright Or Attractive. In America, That's Not The Case. They're Both.

Because, As We All Know, It’s Easier To Do Trivial Things That Are Urgent Than It Is To Do Important Things That Are Not Urgent, Like Thinking. And It’s Also Easier To Do Little Things We Know We Can Do Than To Start On Big Things That We’re Not So Sure About.

The Most Creative People Have Learned To Tolerate The Slight Discomfort Of Indecision For Much Longer And So, Just Because They Put In More Pondering Time, Their Solutions Are More Creative.

Oh, I Could Spend My Life Having This Conversation - Look - Please Try To Understand Before One Of Us Dies

Loving Your Neighbour As Much As Yourself Is Practically Bloody Impossible? You Might As Well Have A Commandment That States,'thou Shalt Fly'.

A Wonderful Thing About True Laughter Is That It Just Destroys Any Kind Of System Of Dividing People.

Tension Is Wonderful For Making People Laugh.

I Just Think That Sometimes We Hang Onto People Or Relationships Long After They've Ceased To Be Of Any Use To Either Of You. I'm Always Meeting New People, And My List Of Friends Seems To Change Quite A Bit.

This Is The Most Important Joke I've Ever Heard. Niels Bohr, The Founder Of Quantum Physics, Had A Friend To Dinner. As The Friend Left, He Noticed A Horseshoe Nailed Above Bohr's Front Door. He Said To Bohr, Accusingly, "niels, You're A Great Scientist. You Can't Believe In Superstitions." Bohr Answered, "i Don't, But Apparently It Works Anyway."as With Confirmation Bias, We Tend To Lean Toward Superstitions That Benefit Us.

Ask Yourself, "when Does This Decision Have To Be Taken?" And Having Answered It, Defer The Decision Until Then, In Order To Give Yourself Maximum Pondering Time.

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