Words matter. These are the best Eric Idle Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’ve always found bad films more enjoyable than good ones.
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?
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’.
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.
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.
Americans like to think ‘Python’ is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.
The Minister of Transport issued this appeal to motorists: Can anyone give him a lift to Leicester?
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.
I’m more surprised than anyone that ‘Spamalot’s done so well. You can never predict what’s going to be a hit.
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.
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.
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.
I will jump on anybody’s private plane at the drop of a hat. I’m an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.
I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.
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.
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.
Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.
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.
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 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.
No day of my life passes without someone saying the words ‘Monty Python’ to me. It’s not bad.
People can tell the truth much more freely when they’re apparently lying.
I love my family, my wife, my kids, my dogs, my home, my life. I am a very happy and contented man.
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.
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’s such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly.
Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead.
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 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 do pool exercises, like weightlifting but underwater. I walk, I swim… I’m pretty fit for an old bloke.
I’m drawn to things that aren’t particularly popular at the time. I don’t know why.
I was thrilled to win a Tony in 2005 for ‘Spamalot’.
