Eric Idle Quotes

I try to not to be a celebrity as much as possible.

One of the reasons we moved to L.A. in the first place [was] so that it was no big deal that I was in show business. We decided if we move[d] to L.A., then everyone in one way or another was involved in it.

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.

I don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.

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

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

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.

I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell.

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 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.

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 never pay any attention to figures.

Filming a pirate film is always good fun, with ships and indecent clothing.

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.

I liked doing live things, and with the Circus we had a live audience.

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.

The idea that we evolved with these thoughts is actually very fascinating - to me.

I think comedy's often the little and the large, isn't it?

Subversion is what I do.

They're a typical Hollywood audience. All the kids are on drugs and all the adults are on roller skates.

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

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.

Executives do not on the whole do well with comedy. They can't understand it, they can't read it, they can't spot it.

I hate movies. They're so boring. So tedious.

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.

My first professional job was appearing in a disastrous theatre production of Oh, What a Lovely War in Leicester Rep, shortly after leaving Cambridge.

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.

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.

I used to collect Persian rugs and real estate - you should be able to walk on and live in your money. I had to give up the rugs because I'm allergic to mould.

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. 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 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.

Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man; good morning, madam, I'm a psychiatrist

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

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

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.

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.

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

I get to be the first doctor in the family [because of the honorary degree they're giving me].

Having little money to spend was a valuable learning experience. My schooling also shaped my work ethic because while other children were listening to the Goons, I was studying, which enabled me to go to Cambridge University.

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

There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.

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.

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.

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.

I used to think I was like the wicket- keeper, which is like the catcher in base- ball, y'know what I mean? You can call the play a lot from behind the plate, y'know what I mean? You're not necessarily the star, you're not the one that makes the mark, but usually in the end, you're called upon to get a run when it's needed.

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'.

I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.

When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.