John Cleese Quotes

but the insanity of punishing someone physically for getting an answer wrong. It is terrifying how much of this deeply unkind, utterly pointless, in fact, mind-bogglingly COUNTERPRODUCTIVE kind of behaviour was meted out to children over the centuries by half-witted, power-crazed zombies like this heinous old bat — a large proportion of such psychopaths allegedly acting in the name of an all-loving God

Tortoise Mind.” “Hare Brain.” They need each other. But keep them separate!

Creativity is not a talent; it's a way of operating.

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.

So if I may give a word of advice to any young writer who, despite the odds, wants to take a shot at being funny, it is this: Steal. Steal an idea that you know is good, and try to reproduce it in a setting that you know and understand. It will become sufficiently different from the original because you are writing it, and by basing it on something good, you will be learning some of the rules of good writing as you go along. Great artists may merely be “influenced by” other artists, but comics “steal” and then conceal their loot.

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.

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.

What's the bleedin' point?

But perhaps the biggest interruption coming from your inside is caused by your worrying about making a mistake.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play

The key thing is to start, even if it feels as though you’re forcing yourself through an emotional roadblock.

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.

Cats are very intelligent at all the things that cats need to be intelligent about.

Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.

We don't know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.