328 Quotes by 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.

What I’ve always wanted to do is be as funny as possible.

My compulsion to always be working has become less strong and my current business is purely down to this enormous alimony. If I wasn’t doing this I’d be making documentaries about wildlife and other subjects that interest me.

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 open mode is a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate, because we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done properly. We can play.

I don’t understand why very, very rich people want to have even more money than they’ve already got.

And so Graham and I finally got down to our first film script, and I can say with complete confidence that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Of course, we had no idea we had no idea what we were doing, and that meant our enthusiasm stayed intact.

Graham always used to say that I was shocked when he came out. That implies some sort of moral objection. Untrue. I was not ‘shocked’, I was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very surprised.

The British fans are liable to suddenly be talking to you about something that you don’t know how you got into the conversation. I think it’s something to do with the fact that they’ve been watching you for so many years sort of you telling your story.