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Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.

John Cleese

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John Cleese
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: October 27
Actor
Autobiographer
Comedian
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Writer
Weston-super-Mare
Somerset
John Marwood Cleese
Operating
Creativity
Talent
Writing
Way

More quotes by John Cleese

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What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it's what followers subsequently make of it.
John Cleese
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I can never do better than 'Fawlty Towers,' whatever I do. Now I very much want to teach young talent some rules of the game.
John Cleese
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Aping urbanity, Oozing with vanity, Plump as a manatee, Faking humanity, Intellectual inanity, Journalistic calamity, Fox Noise insanity, You're a profanity, Hannity.
John Cleese
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Your Mother was A Hamster and you Father Smelled of elder berries.
John Cleese
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The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.
John Cleese
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I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.
John Cleese
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The thrill I got discovering Buster Keaton when I was growing up was so exciting. He was one of the greats.
John Cleese
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Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic - and I'm not exaggerating - that people feel like a decent, ordinary, fun life is no longer enough.
John Cleese
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When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
John Cleese
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I think the problem with people like this is that they are so stupid that they have no idea how stupid they are.
John Cleese
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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.
John Cleese
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The Americans all love 'The Holy Grail', and the English all love 'Life Of Brian', and I'm afraid on this one, I side with the English.
John Cleese
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Either people walk round dressed as chickens or they listen to Beethoven.
John Cleese
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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.
John Cleese
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I wish you wusses would stop whining about your unhappiness. I'm really fed up with it. Pour yourself a scotch and pull yourself together. Go out and shoot something!
John Cleese
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If you really don't know where to start or if you're stuck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting.
John Cleese
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Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.
John Cleese
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When I was in school, I was beaten every 30 minutes. It never did me any harm except for some psychological mal-adjustments and blurred vision.
John Cleese
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The main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.
John Cleese
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I have several times made a poor choice by avoiding a necessary confrontation.
John Cleese