Michael Palin > Quotes

“You can't get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.”
― Michael Palin

“Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life”
― Michael Palin

“I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
― Michael Palin

“NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!”
― Michael Palin

“Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.”
― Michael Palin, Full Circle

“Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.”
― Michael Palin

“I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.”
― Michael Palin, Himalaya

“My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“I feel this evening that I am too hopelessly and happily corrupted by the richness of London life to ever be right for Dorset, or vice-versa.”
― Michael Palin, Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988

“We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet.”
― Michael Palin, Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988

“12.00 midnight: whilst soaking in my bath I hear a distant shout. "I'm going to bed, but I don't necessarily have to go alo-o-ne." It's Dr Chapman in the passage. He repeats the line three times, like someone selling scrap iron and it recedes along the corridor.”
― Michael Palin, Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988

“A good day's filming at last... John Horton's rabbit effects are superb. A really vicious white rabbit, which bites Sir Bor's head off. Much of the ground lost over the week is made up. We listen to the Cup Final in between fighting the rabbit -- Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-0.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“Before entering our room we had to remove our shoes. Here Ken and myself made what I expected to be the first of many faux pas. After taking our shoes off, we noticed some oriental style slippers nearby and presumed that we ought to put these on in true Japanese style. Grumbling that they were all too small, we eventually selected two pairs and were tottering to our room when one of the Japanese ‘attendants’ – it wouldn’t be quite right to call them ‘waitresses’ – stopped us excitedly and told us to take off the shoes. Then we realised the awful truth – that they belonged to people already eating there.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“Talk to a Dutch journalist for an hour. He has 38 questions.”
― Michael Palin, Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988

“Denis O’B rings to say that the first-week take at the Plaza is £40,000. ‘Forty thousand pounds!’ Denis incredulates in tones of almost religious fervency. It is impressive and has beaten the previous highest-ever take at the Plaza (which was for Jaws) by £8,000, with seven fewer performances. So all the publicity has had maximum effect.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“They are trying their best to indict a young generation, who seem to be setting a triumphant example to the older generation – an example of how to enjoy oneself, something which most Englishmen don’t seem really capable of, especially the cynical pressmen of the News of the World. It’s all very sad.”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years

“...go all the way to Sun Alliance to Chancery Lane, only to be told that they wouldn't insure my new house because of my profession. "Actors...and writers...well, you know."

..I couldn't help feeling something of a reject from society as I walked out again into Chancery Lane...my solicitor cheerfully informs me that several big companies, including Eagle Star won't touch actors. The happy and slightly absurd ending to this story is that I finally find a willing insurer in the National Farmers' Union at Huntingdon.”
― Michael Palin, Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988

“If all goes well we should be in Lusaka by tonight, then Victoria Falls, and from what I hear our troubles are over after that. Zimbabwe and South Africa are comfortable, efficient, Westernized. Akuna Matata. No Problem. Wild, uncomfortable, incomprehensible Africa will give way to tamed and tidied Africa – hot baths and iced beers, air-conditioning and daily newspapers, French wines and credit cards. Lying here, listening to the aching wind in a hut by a lake in a forest, I feel a pain of sadness at the prospect of leaving behind all I have been through these past months and returning to a world where experience is sanitized – rationed out second-hand by television and newspapers and magazines and marketing companies.”
― Michael Palin, Pole to Pole

“(Later in my journey I was told of an outrageous but apparently successful attempt to bring tourists to Great Nicobar. During the monsoon torrential rain comes down spectacularly. A bright Indian entrepreneur advertised a tour for rich Arabs from the arid Gulf who could sit on their hotel balcony and watch rain for a week. It was a sell-out.)”
― Michael Palin, Around The World In Eighty Days

“Frank Muir is affable. ‘We’re all fag ends in the gutter of life,’ he replies cheerfully to my observation that the timing of success is quite unpredictable … ‘One realises that all those things like talent, looks, skill and hard work really don’t get you anywhere.”
― Michael Palin, Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988–1998 (Volume 3)

“You’re not a has-been, you’re a has-now.’ I like that.”
― Michael Palin, Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988–1998 (Volume 3)

“Of course I would do it again, but I know it would never be quite the same. Despite the best laid plans of the BBC, we ended up bustling, hurrying, rushing, improvising to get ourselves home only by the skin of our teeth. And that's what made it worth doing. The smoother the journey the duller it would have been.”
― Michael Palin, Around the World in 80 Days: Companion to the Pbs Series

“My philosophy of travel, such as it is, is that the more difficult somewhere is to get to, the greater the prize to be won by getting there. But when the prize was North Korea, I found this was not a view shared by my wife.”
― Michael Palin, North Korea Journal

“Mostly very ordinary, but I do buy an original Ken Livingstone watercolour of Thatcher in a coffin with a Struwwelpeter-like Heseltine looming over her. Painted the day she resigned! Outbid someone at £110.00.”
― Michael Palin, Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988–1998 (Volume 3)

“Another fine, sunny day. Into Prince Walter outfit. Sat around outside the hotel thus attired, read Raymond Chandler, wrote postcards and confused the tourists – who start to appear in droves at about 11.30, are everywhere like insects, and like them, disappear in the cool of the evening. Filmed beside a lake. Eric played his guitar, the crate of beer was kept warm in the water of the lake, and Connie Cleese raped me (on film). What more could a man want of the day?”
― Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years