Eric Idle Quotations

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.

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.

I love my family, my wife, my kids, my dogs, my home, my life. I am a very happy and contented man.

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'.

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 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.

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.

I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.

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.

The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat.

John Cleese once told me he'd do anything for money. So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.

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.

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 do pool exercises, like weightlifting but underwater. I walk, I swim... I'm pretty fit for an old bloke.

Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.

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 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.

Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead.

No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad.

It's such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly.

People can tell the truth much more freely when they're apparently lying.

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.

If the studios paid the artists, how would they ever be able to afford the executives?

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.

Americans like to think 'Python' is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.

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.

I was thrilled to win a Tony in 2005 for 'Spamalot'.

I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.

I'm drawn to things that aren't particularly popular at the time. I don't know why.

I'm more surprised than anyone that 'Spamalot's done so well. You can never predict what's going to be a hit.

I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.

The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?

We've discovered that the less we do, the more money we make.

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 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?

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.

Nudge nudge, know what I mean, say no more

This was our first chance to get a proper, grown-up TV show.

But we were wrong and we were amazed.

Because we hate each other. I'm perfectly happy to get drunk with the rest of them. I was just in London, and we had a really spectacular dinner. But I think it should go no further. We've earned that.

I think he's the most intelligent man I've ever met. Honesty, simplicity and truth are the secret to his comedy.

I think the nice thing for us has been that every 10 years there's been a complete change in technology. It's like buying your own records again.

We're all over 60. I'm sorry to say this, but comedy is really a young man's game. It's sort of about what you had to say when you were fresh and young. And I'm perfectly happy to get drunk with the rest of them.

We're like his test audience. It's a nightmare for Steve, a terrifying experience. The fact that he's done it before doesn't stop the angst.

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.

As long as there are innocent nickels to be made from the gullible, Python-starved public, I shall be out there dressed in silly frocks and singing filthy lyrics. I'm coming your way in search of ancient dollars.

It took all of 15 minutes, but then I have my David Attenborough voice down and there wasn't a lot to do. Most of the time was spent waiting for the guys in Los Angeles to come on line. When they did we breezed through it in four quick takes in a pleasant recording studio, Audio for the Arts on South Blair Street, where they do The Onion. Madison was the original home of The Onion, before it moved to New York, and they still do the radio bits from here.

George once said to me "If we'd known we were going to be The Beatles we'd have tried harder.

They have to get their own personal best. It's called my personal best. ... There was one or two things everybody wanted, and we sort of agreed to let some people have them.

A lot has been said about politicians; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate

I believe in the separation of church and planet.

A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate

I like doing live things and plays. You can perfect the laugh or extend the laugh, you can get them on a roll. Versus improv, which I hate. Put it all together. They're more vignettes. Improv makes me slightly anxious because I feel for them.

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.

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.

I think comedy's often the little and the large, isn't it?

Monty Python only became valuable when it was sold to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in America. They didn't pay much either, but the series has been shown repeatedly, which led to lucrative tapes, CDs and DVDs.

I didn't want to be big Mr. Ego walking around.

Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?

Never do things for money. It's always the things you do for love that turn out to pay the best.

Don't want to turn into mini-me.

Typical Hollywood crowd - all the kids are on drugs, and all the adults are on roller skates.

I've got soggy thighs. It must be dinner time.

I used to think I was like the wicket- keeper, which is like the catcher in base- ball, y'know what I mean? You can call the play a lot from behind the plate, y'know what I mean? You're not necessarily the star, you're not the one that makes the mark, but usually in the end, you're called upon to get a run when it's needed.

You get interviewed when you're out promoting something.

I hate movies. They're so boring. So tedious.

I liked doing live things, and with the Circus we had a live audience.

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat!

Elvis saved my life when I was 13 or 14. He saved all our lives.

I destroy icons - that's what I do.

Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man; good morning, madam, I'm a psychiatrist

The next step will be for the colonists on Mars to throw off the hand of the United States. There will be this wonderful historical irony. When the people on Mars write a declaration of independence saying, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...', the US will be rather pissed off

Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name.

Subversion is what I do.

Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.

If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is "beware". This is not a wine for drinking; this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.

I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.

What's brown and sounds like a bell? DUNG!

The idea that we evolved with these thoughts is actually very fascinating - to me.

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.

Everybody has their own free choice to do what they want...

I don't like animation. I hate animation, actually.

I interviewed Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker], actually, and I got to ask them questions. I love them deeply because they appeared dressed as J-Lo and someone else [who had worn the same scandalous dresses the year before at the Oscars]. They confessed they were on acid.

I don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.

Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can't understand it, they can't read it, they can't spot it.

I get to be the first doctor in the family [because of the honorary degree they're giving me].

I'm not really a celebrity; I'm just vestigially left over from doing stuff from before.

I try to not to be a celebrity as much as possible.

At Cambridge, you have to kiss the vice-chancellor's fingers. But I missed out on that, 'cause I was doing a matinee. I don't want to kiss a strange man's fingers anyway.

Filming a pirate film is always good fun, with ships and indecent clothing.

One of the reasons we moved to L.A. in the first place [was] so that it was no big deal that I was in show business. We decided if we move[d] to L.A., then everyone in one way or another was involved in it.

Even if you've written something for print, I think it's good to try [it] out on someone because it changes. You can think it's hilarious and they can tell you it's not.

I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.

When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.

There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.

I just believe in a huge universe of billions of miles.

I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it's knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.