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I want to write a book which is the history of comedy.

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
Comedy
History
Write
Book
Writing

More quotes by 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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Ask yourself, When does this decision have to be taken? and having answered it, defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time.
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When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.
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Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.
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Michael Palin decided to give up on his considerable comedy talents to make those dreadfully tedious travel shows. Have you ever tried to watch one?
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If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies... Do it in the 'closed' mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the 'open' mode... because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.
John Cleese
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You have to create boundaries of space and then you have to create boundaries of time.
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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It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.
John Cleese
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Students who laugh more- learn more. Students who laugh more earn more.
John Cleese
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We need to be in the open mode when we are pondering a problem, but, once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it.
John Cleese
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Who's ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!
John Cleese
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If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?
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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Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.
John Cleese
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Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.
John Cleese
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If I like chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I've got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money - money is all they think about - they're all nuts.
John Cleese
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I could take an umbrella and balance it on my chin or on my foot. And I just got interested in that kind of thing. And as I played games more and more and got stronger physically, I just became more coordinated.
John Cleese
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Your Mother was A Hamster and you Father Smelled of elder berries.
John Cleese
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I was a terrible dancer. I dance like an Englishman.
John Cleese