Eric Idle Quotes

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

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

I pay taxes in three countries, but can't vote in any of them.

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

I didn't want to be big Mr. Ego walking around.

I interviewed Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker], actually, and I got to ask them questions. I love them deeply because they appeared dressed as J-Lo and someone else [who had worn the same scandalous dresses the year before at the Oscars]. They confessed they were on acid.

My wife, Tania, is very big on dogs, so I'm always paying out to animal charities.

You get interviewed when you're out promoting something.

We destroy icons - that's what we do.

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

I'm not careful with my money at all these days. I buy people a lot of dinners!

Americans like to think 'Python' is how English people really are. There is an element of truth to that.

At Cambridge, you have to kiss the vice-chancellor's fingers. But I missed out on that, 'cause I was doing a matinee. I don't want to kiss a strange man's fingers anyway.

We never have that thought! The whole object is to bite off more than you can chew. John [Du Prez] always says, Eric thinks of something completely insane and insists we go in that direction. It's the correct way to look at things and the correct place to start, I think.

Writers tend to suffer from back problems because they spend their time bent over a desk.

If you're famous, you have to [be overly generous], otherwise people say, "Eric Idle came in and only left me $4." I always tip more than people expect.

I'm not really a celebrity; I'm just vestigially left over from doing stuff from before.

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

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

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.

Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not.

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.

The next step will be for the colonists on Mars to throw off the hand of the United States. There will be this wonderful historical irony. When the people on Mars write a declaration of independence saying, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...', the US will be rather pissed off.

Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.

I listen to the audience and try and bounce with them. All audiences are different. But they are all homo sapiens.

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.

Know what I mean? Eh, eh, Nudge nudge, Say no more?

I will jump on anybody's private plane at the drop of a hat. I'm an old-fashioned lower-middle-class boy.

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

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

I like doing live things and plays. You can perfect the laugh or extend the laugh, you can get them on a roll. Versus improv, which I hate. Put it all together. They're more vignettes. Improv makes me slightly anxious because I feel for them.

My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.

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.

Everybody has their own free choice to do what they want.

Even if you've written something for print, I think it's good to try [it] out on someone because it changes. You can think it's hilarious and they can tell you it's not.

I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it's knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.

Never do things for money. It's always the things you do for love that turn out to pay the best.

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.

I just believe in a huge universe of billions of miles.

I don't like animation. I hate animation, actually.

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

John Cleese once told me he'd do anything for money. So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.

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

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

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

Don't want to turn into mini-me.

Elvis saved my life when I was 13 or 14. He saved all our lives.

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.