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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?

-John Cleese

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I Learned A Lot

John Cleese

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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?

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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?

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

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

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

A Satisfied Customer. We Should Have Him Stuffed.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

If You Wish To Kill Yourself But Lack The Courage To, I Think A Visit To Palmerston North Will Do The Trick.

Technology Frightens Me To Death. It's Designed By Engineers To Impress Other Engineers, And They Always Come With Instruction Booklets That Are Written By Engineers For Other Engineers - Which Is Why Almost No Technology Ever Works.

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

If You Are Leaping A Ravine, The Moment Of Takeoff Is A Bad Time To Be Considering Alternative Strategies.

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.

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

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

When You Get To My Age, And I'm 66 Now, You Realize That The World Is A Madhouse And That Most People Are Operating In Fantasy Anyway. So Once You Realise That, It Doesn't Bother You Much.

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 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.

Comedy Always Works Best When It Is Mean-spirited.

Laughter Is The Best Creative Medicine.

The Most Creative People Have This Childlike Facility To Play.

We All Operate In Two Contrasting Modes, Which Might Be Called Open And Closed. The Open Mode Is More Relaxed, More Receptive, More Exploratory, More Democratic, More Playful And More Humorous. The Closed Mode Is The Tighter, More Rigid, More Hierarchical, More Tunnel-visioned. Most People, Unfortunately Spend Most Of Their Time In The Closed Mode.

Manuel Will Show You To Your Rooms - If You're Lucky.

I Get Bored Easily. I've Been Bored Most Of My Life.

I Don't Want To Hurt People.

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

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.

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

What's The Bleedin' Point?

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

Always Start Where The Energy Is.

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.

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

Tension Is Wonderful For Making People Laugh.

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.

High Creativity Is Responding To Situations Without Critical Thought.

When People Say 'i'm Not A Prude, But ...' What They Mean Is 'i Am A Prude, And ...'.

Too Many People Confuse Being Serious With Being Solemn.

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

I Think There Are So Many Activities Going On, Like Mountaineering. You Know, You Would Pay Good Money Not To Have To Do That, And Yet There Are People Racing Out Who Want To Spend Their Spare Time Clambering Up Rocks.

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.

This Is The Extraordinary Thing About Creativity: If Just You Keep Your Mind Resting Against The Subject In A Friendly But Persistent Way, Sooner Or Later You Will Get A Reward From Your Unconscious.

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?

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.

...when You Collaborate With Someone Else On Something Creative, You Get To Places That You Would Never Get To On Your Own. The Way An Idea Builds As It Careens Back And Forth Between Good Writers Is So Unpredictable. Sometimes It Depends On People Misunderstanding Each Other, And That's Why I Don't Think There's Any Such Thing As A Mistake In The Creative Process. You Never Know Where It Might Lead.

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.

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

Who Your Friends Are

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

Yes It's Her Husband. She Hasn't Got Over It. Died Thirty Years Ago.

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.

For Those Wondering How To Deal With Anxiety And Depression, The First Thing To Consider Is What You're Putting Into Your Mouth.

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.

My Mum Died About Three Years Ago At The Age Of 101, And Just Towards The End, As She Began To Run Out Of Energy, She Did Actually Stop Trying To Tell Me What To Do Most Of The Time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Me, The Great Problem Growing Up In England Was That I Had A Very Narrow Concept Of What God Can Be, And It Was Damn Close To An Old Man With A Beard.

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.

If You Are Leaping A Ravine, The Moment Of Takeoff Is A Bad Time For Considering Alternative Strategies... Do It In The 'closed' Mode. But The Moment The Action Is Over, Try To Return To The 'open' Mode... Because In That Mode We Are The Most Aware, Most Receptive, Most Creative, And Therefore At Our Most Intelligent.

Muslims, Who Have A Completely Different Value System, Come To The West, Then They Should Accept That There Are Certain Basic Values In The West Intrinsic To Our Culture. Just As I Wouldn't Suggest That Any Westerner Walk Down The Streets Of Saudi Arabia In A Bikini.

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

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

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

Creativity Is Not An Ability That You Either Have Or Do Not Have. It Is, For Example, And This May Surprise You, Absolutely Unrelated To Iq, Provided You're Intelligent Above A Certain Minimal Level.

I Would Say That I Began With A Very Edgy, Very Driven Personality And After A Sufficient Amount Of Therapy Over Many, Many Years, I Managed To Become Rather Relaxed And Happy.

There Are 3 Basic Differences Between We British And You Americans. One, We Speak English, And You Don't. Two, When We Have A "world Championship", We Invite Teams From Other Nations. Three, When You Meet The British Head Of State, You Only Have To Get Down On One Knee.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

The Very Essence Of Playfulness Is An Openness To Anything That May Happen, The Feeling That Whatever Happens, It's Okay... You're Either Free To Play, Or You're Not.

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

Laughter Destroys Any Divisions Between People.

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

My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Can't Tell You How Scary It Can Be Walking Onto A Movie And Suddenly Joining This Family - It's Like Going To Somebody Else's Christmas Dinner; Everyone Knows Everyone And You're Not Quite Sure What You're Supposed To Sit.

I Think We're All Born With A Sense Of Humor. Creativity Is Another Thing Though.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

Give Your Mind As Long As Possible To Come Up With Something Original.

The English Contribution To World Cuisine: The Chip.

I Love Having Different Cultures Around, But When The Parent Culture Kind Of Dissipates, You're Left Thinking, 'well, What's Going On?'

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

Laughter Is A Force For Democracy.

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

He Who Laughs Most, Learns Best.

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.

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.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Basil Fawlty Was An Easy Character For Me. For Some Reason, Portraying A Mean, Uptight, Incompetent Bully Comes Naturally To Me.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Filming Takes A Lot Out Of You. It Really Does. It's Immensely Demanding, And You Have To Put The Rest Of Your Life In The Icebox Until You Do Your Final Shot.

Rest Of Your Life

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Don't Let Anyone Tell You What You Ought To Like... Some Wines That Some Experts Think Are Absolutely Exquisite Don't Appeal To Me At All.

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

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.

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

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.

When You're Being Stalked By An Angry Mob With Raspberries, The First Thing To Do Is To Release A Tiger.

England Is A Fairly Envious Little Country And It's Embodied In The Press. They Don't Like Anyone Being More Distinguished Than They Are.

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

Absolutely Nothing

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!

What I've Always Wanted To Do Is Be As Funny As Possible.

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.

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?

The Really Good Idea Is Always Traceable Back Quite A Long Way, Often To A Not Very Good Idea Which Sparked Off Another Idea That Was Only Slightly Better, Which Somebody Else Misunderstood In Such A Way That They Then Said Something Which Was Really Rather Interesting.

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.

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

I Don't Miss London Much. I Find It Crowded, Vast And Difficult To Get Around. Cabs Are Incredibly Expensive.

Sci-fi Has Never Really Been My Bag. But I Do Believe In A Lot Of Weird Things These Days, Such As Synchronicity. Quantum Physics Suggests It's Possible, So Why Not?

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

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

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

I've Always Called Myself A Writer/performer, Not An Actor Because I Basically Write What I Perform.

I Think The Hard Thing For Young Comedians Is That The Majority Of The Young People In The Audience Out There Don't Have The Wide Range Of References.

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.

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.

It Seems Astounding To Me Now That The Video Games Are Perhaps As Important As The Movie Themselves. And People Will Spend 2 Or 3 Years Obsessing About The Video Game In Exactly The Same Way That They'd Be Obsessing About The Movie If They Were Working On That.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

A Man Will Give Up Almost Anything Except His Suffering.

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

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

How To Defend Yourself Against A Banana

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.

Nerves Are Always A Big Problem For Me, Which Is Why I Loved Doing American Sitcoms. Because You Know When You Do The Take In Front Of The Audience That You're Going To Do It Again Afterwards. A Minute After You Finish, You Just Go And Do It Again. So, There's That Sort Of Safety Net. And Then If You Made A Little Mistake Or Two, They'll Go Pick It Up, So There's Nothing To Worry About.

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.

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

I'm Struck By How Laughter Connects You With People. It's Almost Impossible To Maintain Any Kind Of Distance Or Any Sense Of Social Hierarchy When You're Just Howling With Laughter. Laughter Is A Force For Democracy.

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.

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

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.

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

But Then Acting Is All About Faking. We're All Very Good At Faking Things That We Have No Competence With.

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.

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

There's Nothing Good On The Television; Let's Burn A Witch. It Must Have Been Terribly Exciting To Live In Those Times.

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

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.

What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

Rhetorical Question

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.

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.

Bureaucrats Shouldn't Be In Charge Of Comedy.

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