John Cleese Quotes - Page 5

You can't make Christ funny. He's self-aware, he's too flexible within the situation. It's rigidity, it's when the ego takes over and the behavior becomes inappropriate that it becomes funny.

God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.

I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of perfect.

I would say that I began with a very edgy, very driven personality and after a sufficient amount of therapy over many, many years, I managed to become rather relaxed and happy.

It's a plastic surgeon you need, not a doctor

It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

Bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of comedy.

Filming takes a lot out of you. It really does. It's immensely demanding, and you have to put the rest of your life in the icebox until you do your final shot.

When we hold a World Championship for a particular sport, we invite teams from other countries to play as well.

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

Filming is like a long air journey: there's so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food.

I'm always meeting new people, and my list of friends seems to change quite a bit.

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.

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

A lot of humour is about just enjoying life and spontaneity and because you make a joke that puts somebody down - we're always teasing each other. It's with affection. It's nasty teasing that we - not all teasing; nasty teasing you cut out.

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.

All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?

As Daniel Levitin writes, our brain is a "giant pattern detector." If we read something that coincides with what we already believe we're more likely to give it credence, while the opposite is not true.

I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'

You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.

Who's ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!

The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats.

If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.

Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.