Quotes from Terry Gilliam

If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.

Talent is less important in filmmaking than patience.

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe its a different one. The old one got fired.

I was an incredible Anglophile. I found people who shared the same sense of humor and attitude toward the world.

People used to think we just faked all that stuff... it was all written, rehearsed. The fact that it looks as cobbled together as it does is just that we weren't very good.

There are moments when television systems are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.

I've given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me ... and marvel stupidly.

Gorillaz virtually changed my wife...sorry, I mean, life...no, actually, it was my wife.

I was getting frustrated with America. It's interesting how as simple a thing as, like, letting your hair grow longer changed in the world in those days.

I keep referring to them in the plural but all I'm dealing with is Bob. I don't know where Harvey fits in the equation. He was very present at the beginning, winding his brother up. I don't know where he is now.

I never define depression, clinical or otherwise. It's the basis of most life, it seems to me, in the modern world. We're all depressed.

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to start making and throwing bombs. I thought I was probably a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.

In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that.

At the first screening, there were a lot of areas that we went around and around about. Then we had our second screening. It played better. It's almost a reasonable length film now!

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.

It was lights, camera, inaction.

You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.

It's been interesting how kids have had hardly any problems watching it, but adults have more trouble. This happened way back even with Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.

It's 85 million dollars and they got to be really careful because they are going to need me.

Writers do the self-censoring before they even get to the studio executive, because they know the film will not run that gauntlet. They, because they want to get their films made, they censor it.