Quotes from John Cleese

When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.

I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.

I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.

A man will give up almost anything except his suffering.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

English television from the Fifties to the Nineties was the least bad in the world, and now it's just as bad as it is anywhere.

I'm not saying Obama is right on everything. Of course not. He may be wrong on a number of things. But what I do know is that he behaves like a very, very sane man almost all the time.

I find the Alexander Technique very helpful in my work. Things happen without you trying. They get to be light and relaxed. You must get an Alexander teacher to show it to you.

I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.

To be creative you must create a space for yourself where you can be undisturbed... separate from everyday concerns.

I don't miss London much. I find it crowded, vast and difficult to get around. Cabs are incredibly expensive.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play

It seems astounding to me now that the video games are perhaps as important as the movie themselves. And people will spend 2 or 3 years obsessing about the video game in exactly the same way that they'd be obsessing about the movie if they were working on that.

I think that the real religion is about the understanding that if we can only still our egos for a few seconds, we might have a chance of experiencing something that is divine in nature.

Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.

If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick.

What's the bleedin' point?

OTTO. Apes don't read philosophy. WANDA. Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

One of our professors described a lecture as 'a mystical process by which the notes on the pad of the lecturer pass on to the pad of the student, without passing through the mind of either'.

Yes, I know it's easy to make fun of the organised churches, but has it occurred to anyone to wonder why it's so easy?

The greatest killer of creativity is interruption. It pulls your mind away from what you want to be thinking about. Research has shown that, after an interruption, it can take eight minutes for you to return to your previous state of consciousness, and up to twenty minutes to get back into a state of deep focus.

I realised that I really disliked him, and I knew exactly why: he didn't know the difference between being solemn and being serious.

You do realize as you grow older that almost nobody knows what they are talking about.

British journalists tend to believe that people who become good at something do so because they seek fame and fortune. This is because these are the sole motives of people who become British journalists. But some people, operating at higher levels of mental health, pursue activities because they actually love them.