John Cleese Quotes
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Well, the only way I can get a leading-man role is if I write it.
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If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Aping Urbanity, Oozing with Vanity Plump as a Manatee, Faking Humanity Journalistic Calamity, Intellectual Inanity Fox News Insanity, You're a profanity Hannity
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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.
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The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.
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Wine is wonderful stuff. But so many people are put off by the snobbery of it.
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A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.
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Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.
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I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.
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In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both.
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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.
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My biggest regret? Not being knighted by the Queen. I should have been a knight, and I would have been knighted, if I hadn't written one horrible horrible Python sketch which I deeply deeply regret - cue Python sketch: 'Upper Class Twit of the Year'
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The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think that sometimes you do something that makes a small group of people laugh, which is all we were trying to do; we were just trying to make each other laugh.
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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.
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You see, you could never do a sketch like that these days. The audience is too uninformed. I blame the Americans. Nation of obese, violent, pig-ignorant, bible-thumping morons contaminating world culture. That’s why I spend most of my time here in France. … Beautiful, isn’t it? Just look at those olive trees. Interviewer: This is Santa Barbara.
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Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.