Eric Idle Quotes
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I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.
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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.
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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.
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I was thrilled to win a Tony in 2005 for 'Spamalot'.
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John Cleese once told me he'd do anything for money. So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.
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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.
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We've discovered that the less we do, the more money we make.
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I love my family, my wife, my kids, my dogs, my home, my life. I am a very happy and contented man.
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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.
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Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.
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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.
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Americans like to think 'Python' is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.
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No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad.
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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.
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I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.
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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.
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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.
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It's such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly.
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I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.
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The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.