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" I always wanted to be an explorer, but - it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person. "
Michael Palin
Person
Always
Nothing
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" When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.' "
Michael Palin
Myself
Life
Sometimes
" I don't seek discomfort. But, very often, you realise that what you fear is actually quite ephemeral; something's different, something's unfamiliar; therefore, it must be worse. "
Michael Palin
Discomfort
Different
You
" I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert. "
Michael Palin
Love
Iran
Go
" When I'm travelling, I always take my little notebook and scribble things down as I watch them; I'm very much geared to everything that's happening. Whereas, the diary I keep is just about a record of a day I've spent. When I'm filming, I'm looking quite intensely at everything I see and trying to get my own eye on what we're going through. "
Michael Palin
Down
Trying
My Own
" I'm not your expert on Africa or animals or whatever. I'm not a travel writer or maker of documentaries. I was someone who doesn't know very much, trying to communicate. "
Michael Palin
Trying
Know
Someone
" I do have high standards. I look at everything I have done and think, 'Why wasn't that better?' Part of my motivation is from crippling self-doubt - I have got to prove myself wrong. "
Michael Palin
Motivation
Myself
Think
" I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers. "
Michael Palin
Modern
Now
Some
" Please don't ask which I enjoy more - acting or hosting - because I love them equally. "
Michael Palin
Love
Acting
More
" I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them. "
Michael Palin
Day
People
Thought
" I love reading other people's diaries, especially someone like Virginia Woolf's - such a formidable woman that it's a revelation when she shows you a more vulnerable side of herself. "
Michael Palin
You
Love
Woman
" The human race should just slow down and think about what it is doing. "
Michael Palin
Down
Human
Race
" So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me. "
Michael Palin
People
Me
Story
" I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start. "
Michael Palin
You
Start
Sometimes
" I will die, but not retire. "
Michael Palin
Die
Retire
Will
" There are people who travel because they want to push themselves to physical limits, people who walk across deserts or cycle across the Antarctic - like Ranulph Fiennes, who just does it because it's there. And then there are people like me, who are just genuinely curious about the world. "
Michael Palin
People
World
Walk
" I am restless. I don't mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village. "
Michael Palin
Village
Mind
Leaving
" I'd got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me. "
Michael Palin
People
Over
Me
" 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
World
People
Diversity
" There is nothing better than playing a scene with John Cleese or Maggie Smith. It's electric. But I don't think I'm the sort of person who needs to have an outer ego in order to produce something. I realised that through the travel programmes. "
Michael Palin
Ego
Nothing
Think
" The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience. "
Michael Palin
You
Trouble
Travel
" I've been lucky enough to stand on both poles, but the place that seemed the remotest to me was Butugychag, a former gulag in Siberia. It is completely cut off from the rest of the world. "
Michael Palin
World
Stand
Place
" I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking. "
Michael Palin
World
Me
Myself
" People look for patterns in everything. It's what keeps us sane, I suppose. I struggle to see any patterns in my life. I think I can understand depression a bit because of my sister. My own feelings of... I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is. "
Michael Palin
Look
Sister
Struggle
" I don't see why it should be remarkable that you can acquire a reputation for fairness and decency. Those are qualities shared by so many people. And the great majority of people I meet are decent people, just trying to navigate their way through the world without causing too much trouble. "
Michael Palin
World
Great
Reputation
" I've never had a particular skill. I can't cook, dance, play an instrument, speak a foreign language. This used to worry me. I'd think, when I'm grown up, at 18, then I made it 21, it will be clear what role I should have in life. It never happened. I never signed on the dotted line as the sort of adult my father wanted. "
Michael Palin
Speak
Dance
Life
" People say the most stupid things on the spur of the moment that they then have to retract. "
Michael Palin
Moment
People Say
People
" Fame changes everything. When you're well-known, you're expected to be different. Some people assume you must have a yacht and four homes. Or that you're famous because you are 'A Decent Man'. "
Michael Palin
People
Be Different
Famous
" Travelling, and being paid for it, is just great. "
Michael Palin
Paid
Just
Being
" If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it. "
Michael Palin
Rock
Practice
Pink
" Despite having seen a fair amount of the world, I still love travelling - I just have an insatiable curiosity and like looking out of a window. "
Michael Palin
Window
Curiosity
Looking