Quotes from Michael Palin

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.

I can be me, and people seem quite happy with that.

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

I love reading other people's diaries, especially someone like Virginia Woolf's - such a formidable woman that it's a revelation when she shows you a more vulnerable side of herself.

There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world.

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.

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

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

In the absence of fear there is little faith.

I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own.

George Harrison's passing was really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.

One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.

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

When I'm travelling, I always take my little notebook and scribble things down as I watch them; I'm very much geared to everything that's happening. Whereas, the diary I keep is just about a record of a day I've spent. When I'm filming, I'm looking quite intensely at everything I see and trying to get my own eye on what we're going through.

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.

Hollywood was possible for a while! Why didn't I go along with it? Well, the other things that were pulling me back were more important. Being at home, being in the same marriage, these things enabled me to go off and travel in the first place.

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.

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

I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is.

So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.

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.

Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people.