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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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 was thrilled to win a Tony in 2005 for 'Spamalot'.
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We've discovered that the less we do, the more money we make.
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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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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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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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No day of my life passes without someone saying the words 'Monty Python' to me. It's not bad.
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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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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 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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Americans like to think 'Python' is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.
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It's such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly.
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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 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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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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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 do pool exercises, like weightlifting but underwater. I walk, I swim... I'm pretty fit for an old bloke.
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I've always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.
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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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I'm drawn to things that aren't particularly popular at the time. I don't know why.
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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.