John Cleese Quotes

He who laughs most, learns best.

If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself.

Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me.

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.

Four hundred years ago, we would have been burnt for this film. Now, I'm suggesting that we've made an advance.

It was an astonishing fantasy but it showed me what even apparently sensible people can believe if they really want to.

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.

Terry Gilliam has spoken scathingly about my preference for physical comfort. I have come to the conclusion that this is very much his problem.

Once you've got — actually got — an idea that is whirring around so fast that no other light or contrary evidence can come in, I think it's very dangerous.

Всъщност самоиронията с право се приема за здравословна, а и всички предпочитаме хората, които не се вземат прекалено на сериозно.

The problem with political correctness is that comedians have to set the bar according to what we are told by the most touchy, most emotionally unstable and fragile and least stoic people in the country.

Sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.

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

It is easier to do trivial things that are urgent, than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.

You can’t have a new idea ’til you’ve got rid of an old one.