Eric Idle Quotes

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

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

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

Always look on the brighter side of life

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.

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

I never pay any attention to figures.

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.

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. 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.

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

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?

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.

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

Laughter is the only sane response to pathological lying.

I don't invest in the stock market, but I have pension funds - some in America and the UK.

The room was rococo. I had a strong sense of gilt.

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

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it, life's a laugh and deat's a joke, it's true: You'll se it's all a show, keep'em laughing as you go, just remember that the last laugh is on YOU ... and ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE

You could feel the place going crazy because we hadn't been on stage together for maybe 35 years and the audience could just feel us in the darkness come on and they went nuts. It made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck and we sang Sit on My Face, which I thought was wonderfully appropriate for George's memorial, and then we bowed and we showed our bare asses.

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

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.

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

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

So, what have I learned over my long and weird life?
Well, first, that there are two kinds of people, and I don't much care for either of them. Second, when faced with a difficult choice, either way is often best. Third, always leave a party when people begin to play the bongos.

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

You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.

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

I used to have a house in London, but couldn't face 20 more years of St John's Wood in the rain.

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'.

Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn't stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself is only supported by tons of evidence, which is a clear indication that Darwin didn't write his books himself.

Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.

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.

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.

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

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

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

We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.

I always have a feeling you should move the playing field and the minute you know what you're doing, you're wrong. Therefore, I wanted us not to try to follow Spamalot immediately, but to do something different. This is perfect because it uses all the same skills, like story telling and lyric writing and music writing, but it's presenting it in a different form. And of course it gives me and John a nice chance to perform and show off which is also fun.

Many years ago I also bought a house in Provence for about 70,000 francs. It had no electricity or running water, and no road leading to the house, but gradually we made improvements. It's my escape and I love it.

When, in 1966, I progressed to The Frost Report, I was paid ten guineas a minute. I was guaranteed three minutes a week, so this was good money.

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.

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.

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.

So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John [Du Prez, Idle's co-writer of many years]. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind.

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

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

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will make me cry by myself in a corner for hours.

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.

If this isn't exactly what went down, it's certainly how it should have happened.

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

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.

I bring messages and thanks from the others. Terry Gilliam sadly can't be with us tonight as they won't let him show his ass, which has been very favorably compared with Spielberg's ass.
Graham Chapman can't be with us tonight, as sadly he is still dead. And John Cleese is finishing a movie.
He has to get it back to Blockbuster by tomorrow.

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

Well we were lucky because we started in Canada where everybody has a sense of humour! We flirted a little while with Josh Groban. He was personally interested in it. He said oh I'd love to do something different, and I said well it's pretty different! But in the end the dates didn't work out.

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.

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.

People who are interested in money are really uninteresting people. They look like Donald Trump.

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

Fuck you very much, the FCC.
Fuck you very much for fining me.
Five thousand bucks a fuck,
So I'm really out of luck.
That's more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me.

When I was 23 I started writing for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and was paid three guineas for every minute's airtime.