Michael Palin Quotes

One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.

I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group.

I'm not good at confrontation. I know my strengths. I like company. And I am not a great arguer ... I do find it much easier talking to people I like about things we both like.

I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.

I will die, but not retire.

I was very bad at projecting my voice. I used to do this Gumby Flower Arranging sketch which involved shouting, and I could never do it right, and at one point my voice went completely.

Ronnie Barker was a straightforward man who had this extraordinary ability to make the nation laugh

People look for patterns in everything. It's what keeps us sane, I suppose. I struggle to see any patterns in my life. I think I can understand depression a bit because of my sister. My own feelings of ... I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is.

I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert.

In the absence of fear there is little faith.

I always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.

If atheists are deaf to the word of God, then theists are blind to the ways of man.

All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me.

Despite having seen a fair amount of the world, I still love travelling - I just have an insatiable curiosity and like looking out of a window.

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet.

I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.

My marriage has worked because I am not around much.

I have been unusually blessed in that I've been allowed to pursue two strands of a career that both delight me and seem to please the public.

Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future

John Hall, my geography teacher at school inspired me to a lifelong interest in geography and a curiosity about our world which has stayed with me through my life. Geography is a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant. For me geography is a great adventure with a purpose.

I do have high standards. I look at everything I have done and think, 'Why wasn't that better?' Part of my motivation is from crippling self-doubt - I have got to prove myself wrong.

12.00 midnight: whilst soaking in my bath I hear a distant shout. "I'm going to bed, but I don't necessarily have to go alo-o-ne." It's Dr Chapman in the passage. He repeats the line three times, like someone selling scrap iron and it recedes along the corridor.

If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.

Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.

It's not a model if it's full-size. It's a ice-breaker!

As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.

A good day's filming at last ... John Horton's rabbit effects are superb. A really vicious white rabbit, which bites Sir Bor's head off. Much of the ground lost over the week is made up. We listen to the Cup Final in between fighting the rabbit
Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-0.

Travelling, and being paid for it, is just great.

I mistrust total competence. I've always felt life is a series of small disasters we try to get through.

The need to eat, sleep and dry out plays havoc with your sense of wonder.

You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to.

'Nice' means nothing. Is it someone who doesn't swear and shout? I swear and shout. 'Nice' sounds ineffectual.

The human race should just slow down and think about what it is doing.

Go all the way to Sun Alliance to Chancery Lane, only to be told that they wouldn't insure my new house because of my profession. "Actors ... and writers ... well, you know."
..I couldn't help feeling something of a reject from society as I walked out again into Chancery Lane ... my solicitor cheerfully informs me that several big companies, including Eagle Star won't touch actors. The happy and slightly absurd ending to this story is that I finally find a willing insurer in the National Farmers' Union at Huntingdon.

Somewhere, a long way away, people are doing sensible things like mowing lawns and digging gardens.

There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.

I'd got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me.

I'm not your expert on Africa or animals or whatever. I'm not a travel writer or maker of documentaries. I was someone who doesn't know very much, trying to communicate.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.

I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.

'The Truth' is not meant to preach or point any fingers. It's meant to show that perhaps we should all avoid taking the moral high ground unless we have thought about things a bit more.

I am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village.

Listen
strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

I've always been blessed, or cursed, some might say, with an insatiable curiosity, a desire to find something out about a people and a place. That's where it all begins.

I don't seek discomfort. But, very often, you realise that what you fear is actually quite ephemeral; something's different, something's unfamiliar; therefore, it must be worse.

I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller.

Fame changes everything. When you're well-known, you're expected to be different. Some people assume you must have a yacht and four homes. Or that you're famous because you are 'A Decent Man'.

Something about John Cleese was always very unsettled, I felt. There was always something else he wanted to do. He seemed constantly driven by this sense that there was a nirvana somewhere; some unique place where mind, body and soul would be utterly satisfied.

The kids growing up is a separate strand to your life. However bad a day you've had, that's the most important thing, and you have to remember that.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!

Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.

If I am seen as successful, it's all the more reason not to change - not to lose track of friends, not to be driven everywhere, not to go and get away from the world. That, to me, is real success: enjoying what you do, but being the same person.

I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.